


we should get jerseys

by Sorrel



Category: Deadpool (2016), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Slow Burn, Threesome - F/M/M, sarcastic assholes in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-05-27 09:47:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6279643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>'cause we make a great team</i>
</p><p>Boredom's a real killer when you've topped your resume by taking down an international criminal organization.  Wade's been in the market for a new pet project, and who should happen to come along but our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?  Peter's understandably a little shy of our charming Merc with the Mouth, but luckily for him, he happens to know a certain damsel not-so-much-in-distress that's willing to serve as an excellent character witness.  From there it's just a short hop, skip, and one huge leap for spiderkind into a whole new world of trouble for our web-slinging hero.  Good thing he's starting to learn to <i>like</i> trouble.</p><p>Featuring: stalking (for justice and otherwise), showtunes, a series of increasingly improbable dinner dates, the Apartment of Doom, a judicious amount of mad science, homoerotic fight sequences, highly sexual tai-chi, musical montages, and a truly sickening amount of domestic bliss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ISSUE ONE

**Author's Note:**

> -This is all Chaya's fault. I wouldn't be here if she didn't sit there and talk about adorable Spideypool fic ideas on gchat, and send me death-spiralling into the pairing tag for weeks on end. Goddamnit, I don't even go to this school.
> 
> -The music notes are youtube links to the songs being quoted, in case you want to experience the magic for yourself, but proper citation will be in the chapter notes.
> 
> -Title is from "Must've Done Something Right" by Relient K.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Wade is bored, Peter hates Thursdays, and Vanessa is amused.

He'd like to say that after it was all over, he and Vanessa rode off into the sunset together (or at least back to her apartment to have a lot of sex), and that he settled down, and did right by her, and definitely did not maim or kill anyone else ever again, because that sort of thing is Frowned Upon in Polite Society, Wade.

But let's be honest here. He wasn't exactly what you'd call an upstanding citizen _before_ he came over all Freddy Kruger, and the gentle bootheel of personal tragedy didn't really instill in him a fine-tuned sense of empathy for his fellow man. Or morality. Or… even common decency, really.

So in reality, it takes about three weeks for him to get incredibly, incredibly bored.

It's not like he needs money anytime soon. Underground criminal organizations tend to leave a lot of liquid assets lying around, and it's not like he was going to turn his nose up at petty (or grand) larceny when he was already murdering his way through the staff. He's got cash enough banked with some of the off-books locals to cover the next five or ten years of living expenses, depending on whether or not he wants to upgrade and assuming he continues to supplement his gun budget extracurricularly. He's been taking them off bad guys who don't deserve nice things if they're not going to bother to learn how to shoot straight, but he does have some restocking to do after his collection went down the unfriendly maw of the NYPD evidence locker by way of Dopinder's back seat.

(Poor Dopinder. He didn't even get the girl!)

But he hadn't gotten into mercenary work for Sister Margaret's because he needed the cash, either. More than a decade of tax-free government moolah had seen to that, and the UCMJ hadn't been able to account for most of the proceeds of his sideline, so he'd had a tidy little nest egg going, even after the DD. He'd gotten into the soldier of fortune business because he needed to do _something,_ after five years of back-to-back jobs, and he's starting to feel the same itch again now. He put months of focused, constant effort into bringing down Francis's operation, and once you've gone and hit the big leagues, anything else starts to feel like kind of a letdown in comparison. You start wondering, asking yourself stuff like, _Is this all there is to life? Are these going to be the last of glory days? Why is ammo so fucking expensive?_

You know, all the usual bullshit existential crap.

It's just like it was last time, too, when he got bounced off the government teat for the first time since he could legally vote. There's not a lot of room for good ol' military discipline on a black-bag operation, but there's still a certain structure to your life that you just don't get on the outside. As it turns out, long-term revenge planning works out pretty much the same way. For a year, every day was "get up, check on Vanessa, stake out a warehouse, check on Vanessa, stake out a transport route, check on Vanessa, stake out a safehouse, check on Vanessa," with only the occasional run-in with an X-Man or a bout of incredible violence to break up the monotony. It was a comfortable routine, and now he's not entirely sure what to do with himself. Somehow going back to living from gold card to gold card at Sister Margaret's just doesn't have the same appeal as it used to.

Plus, apparently he's on the naughty list ever since "certain people" who shall remain disloyal fuckheads spilled the beans to management that the fellow in red with all the active warrants and their very own Wade Wilson were one and the same. Apparently he's not low-profile enough anymore to work for them. Assholes.

(At least they'll still let him drink at the bar. Thank heaven for small favors and shit beer.)

Anyway, the point is: he's bored. Like, he's so bored he's ready to call up the X-mansion and see if they're still interested in another member for their little boyband. _That_ bored. He doesn't do it, obviously, because a) there wouldn't be much to this incredibly touching love story if he _had,_ and b) he'd rather be impaled on rusty rebar (again!) then put himself through that kind of moralizing, but he's thinking about it, and that's bad enough.

He needs a hobby. Stat.

Conveniently for our narrative, something was about to show up.

Wade's had a nice relaxing Thursday evening of beating the shit out of a couple of local drug dealers who don't know how to take no for an answer, liberated a new pistol that was way better than those idiots deserved ("It's okay," he whispers to Bertha, petting the holster. "You've got a forever home now."), and is rounding out his day with a nice bit of light stalking. Well, "waiting for his girlfriend to get off work," technically, but seeing as he's sitting on the fire escape half a block down the alley, it still feels like old times. He's technically allowed to go inside and wait for her like all the other boyfriends who haven't started brawls and lost their entry privileges (a small and select number), but he doesn't like going in barefaced because pity from strippers is about as low as you can go, emotionally speaking, and he can't go in wearing his suit because it's a "disruption" that "frightens the customers," and there are "warrants for his arrest."

Whatever.

The point being, that he's in exactly the right spot, at exactly the right time, to notice that there's someone on the roof.

Now, there's a limited number of reasons that someone could be skulking around on the roof of a building next to a strip club. Especially when that building is an abandoned factory that has a really quite impressive padlock on the stairwell exit onto said roof, which Wade definitely doesn't know about because of his close personal experience with stalking someone from that roof. (Obviously.) It's not like someone could just wander up there to do a bit of romantic stargazing. And either way you cut it, dude is definitely, _definitely_ watching the Kitty Catt's back alley entrance. (Heh.)

_You met Vanessa because of a stalker,_ he tells himself. _Obviously it's just good circular narration that a stalker has oh-so-helpfully presented themselves for your entertainment._

Satisfied with that explanation, Wade disappears himself down the alley and creeps around the back corner of the factory. The roof exit from the stairwell probably isn't his best bet to move quietly- that door squeaks like a motherfucker- but there's a set of outside stairs that isn't rusted too badly on the opposite side of the building. Since the stalker is watching the strip club, he probably won't be paying the best attention to someone coming up behind him.

_His mistake._

_Or mine,_ Wade thinks, a couple minutes later, when his boot hits a bit of loose mortar, climbing over the edge of the roof. It didn't make much of a noise, but the stalker hears it anyway and spins around like a startled deer- no, wait, that's a bad metaphor, deer don't really move when they're startled. Like a startled… possum? Wade squints across the roof at the guy. Wildlife really isn't his forte.

Stalker dude puts up his (gloved?) hands and takes a slow step forward. "This isn't what it looks like."

"Sure it's not, champ," Wade says, and takes a not-so-slow step forward. There's a lot of roof in between them, but Wade's also a lot closer to both exits. Not to brag, but his reflexes are pretty solid. He's willing to put a bet on himself for this one. "There's _oodles_ of innocent reasons why a guy like you would be in a place like this."

Stalker sighs. "Why is it always Thursdays?"

Wade's about to tell him- Thursday crises are a long-standing narrative tradition, and who are they to mess with the natural order of things?- but then Stalker takes another couple of sidling steps forward. It inches him squarely into the loving glow of the flickering security light, and Wade gets his first good-ish look at the guy.

He was anticipating a lot of things from this scenario, but "another costumed freak" was definitely not on the list. Wade frowns at him. The outfit looks vaguely familiar, but Wade's kind of distracted by the way his gaze snags on the way the spandex clings to the guy's thigh muscles. Man, that costume is really, _impressively_ failing to hide… anything. At all.

Wowza.

"For the record, this is the worst meet-cute ever," Wade says, and drops his hand down to Bertha's holster, because a spasm of very intense lust is not a good excuse to be an idiot. He frowns at the freak. There's something on his chest, but Wade can't quite make it out. "C'mere, let me get a good look at you."

Freak visibly eyeballs his hand on his holster. "I'm thinking _no._ "

"No, I just wanted to know-" He squints a little harder at the symbol on Freak's chest. The light's still not great, but he's pretty sure that's- "Holy shitnoodles, you're Spiderman!"

Freak/Spiderman tilts his head to the side. "You were expecting someone else?"

"I wasn't expecting Spiderman!" He puts his hands on his hips and looks the guy up and down. Now that he's getting a better look, it's hard to miss certain similarities. "Dude. Since when did Spiderman rip off my look?"

Spiderman scowls- well, it sort of seems like he does, but facial expressions don't really come across the greatest when you're in a full-face mask, as Wade has had painful opportunity to learn. "Since never? _You_ ripped it off from _me._ "

"Joke's on you, I was ripped off a completely different character," Wade jabs back. Then he thinks about the wikipedia article. "Okay, but you did predate me in publication history by 29 years and my banter was meant to appeal to your established demographic, so I'll allow it."

Spiderman crosses his arms over his chest. It's probably meant to seem threatening. Unfortunately, the guy's just not big enough to quite pull it off. He's hot, but in a scrawny sort of way. Wade gives him points for effort though. "There's also the fact that I've been wearing this costume for over four years and I've never heard of you, so…"

"Aw," Wade says, disappointed. "I guess my fame hasn't preceded me."

Spiderman smirks. Wade can't quite see it through the mask, but he knows he's smirking. He can just tell. "I guess you're just not that important."

"Rude," Wade tells him. "I'm Deadpool!"

Spiderman goes suddenly, vibratingly still. Wade instinctively puts his hand back on his holster, because he knows a fight-or-flight response when he sees one, and he's not familiar enough with Spiderman to know which it's going to be. "The guy from the bridge," Spiderman says, his voice a little lower than before, and Wade beams.

"Yeah! You caught the show?"

"You could say that," Spiderman says, and swallows. "Uh, no offense, but I was kind of hoping we'd never have to run into each other. What the hell do you want?"

Wade's all set to be offended- they could be great friends! Spiderman doesn't know what he's missing out on!- but the last line reminds him of why he came up here, and he points accusingly. "You! You're supposed to be a good guy- aside from the whole antihero bodyswap run, and reviews were pretty mixed on that one. I'm pretty sure stalking wasn't listed in the superhero manual."

Spiderman eyes him and sighs. "Seriously, is there any chance you're going to listen when I tell you it's not what it looks like?"

Wade considers it. For about two seconds. Unfortunately, he's proof positive that a mask does not exactly make an individual more trustworthy.

"...Yeah, I'm gonna go with 'no' on that one," Wade decides, and pulls out his gun.

Well, he tries to, anyway. He's fast on the draw but Spiderman turns out to be faster, which is something interesting he's going to think about later because the last guy he killed was supposed to have enhanced reflexes and Wade could still beat him to the punch. (Or chop. Or stab. Or trigger. Whatever.) Wade barely has time to process a flick of Spiderman's wrist before he finds himself with his hand glued to his own holster by some kind of… white… goo.

_Okay, that's just crossing the line._

He glares up at Spiderman. "Did you just fucking jizz at me?"

"What? No!" Spiderman glares at him. "It's _webbing,_ you-"

"You just jizzed at me!" Wade says, and goes for his belt with his free hand. Spoiler alert: he's ambidextrous. "And you didn't even ask first! Consent is important!"

"Oh my god-" Spiderman says, in tones of great suffering, but he yelps when a knife suddenly comes whizzing towards his shoulder and leaps sideways, snatching it out of the air. _Wow, his reflexes are even better than I thought._ Wade had been aiming to the left, anticipating the jump, but Spiderman had reacted before Wade had even finished the throw. And while catching a knife isn't the same as, say, an arrow, it's still pretty damned impressive. "What the hell is wrong with you!"

_Good question._ "Nothing!" Wade lies with great bluster and enthusiasm, and cuts his hand free with the other knife. Ah, sweet freedom. He wriggles his fingers and reaches for his katana. "I'm not the superhero who just got caught creeping on a strip club!"

"I have not had enough sleep for this," Spiderman mutters sadly, and then goes into a dive roll that almost entirely closes the distance between them and comes up with a kick that Wade would like to say he ducked, because this is _his_ story and _he's_ supposed to be the one who does all the cool combat stuff. But what actually happens is that he takes a foot right to the solar plexus, a lot harder than he would have expected from a guy Spiderman's size who is wearing, basically, fancy footy pajamas, and gets knocked ignominiously back against the wall, the wind temporarily knocked out of him.

_This is not my finest moment,_ he has time to think, and then half a second later more of the jizz stuff is covering his hands, feet, knees, and elbows, thoroughly sticking him against the wall and preventing him from reaching any of his weapons. (Even the hidden ones, mother _fuck._ ) He wriggles a couple times, trying to see how much give he's got, but the odds are not looking great.

Well, at least he's not on his back. He'd probably be a lot unhappier if he'd gotten pinned down flat. Homicidally unhappier.

Actually, this position is pretty great. Wade wiggles again. Comfy. Doesn't feel anything like being strapped down. Huh. It's actually kind of-

He looks down at this cock. _Really?_

Spiderman crosses his arms over his chest again and glares at him. "Are you done? Can we have a civilized conversation now?"

_[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DmAh0dObI&t=1m0s) Oooooh dreeeam weaver… [♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DmAh0dObI&t=1m0s)_

"Oh no," Wade says.

Spiderman raises an eyebrow. "No?"

"No, not you, I mean-"

_[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DmAh0dObI&t=1m0s) Oooooh dreeeam weaver…_  
_I believe you can get me through the night[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DmAh0dObI&t=1m0s)_

"This is not the time for a musical interlude," Wade says, but it's too late: he's already staring at Spiderman's lean thighs, the ropes of muscle in his forearms, the trim line of his jaw that's only barely obscured by the mask. He's not exactly a bodybuilder, but _oh em gee,_ is he definitely working with what he's got.

Not that Wade wasn't noticing before, obviously. But there's something to be said for the slo-mo highlights reel, complete with stage lighting and an appropriate musical soundtrack. All that's missing is an electric guitar and long hair flipping back in slow motion. Does Spiderman even have long hair?

_[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DmAh0dObI&t=1m0s)Ooooooh dreeeam weaver_  
_I believe we can reach the morning light...[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DmAh0dObI&t=1m0s)_

Spiderman squints at him. Wade watches him put his gloved hands to his hips, and thinks about getting him to put his hands on Wade's hips instead. For starters. And then from there it'd be a short trip to his-

"Are you… okay?"

"That is a matter of interpretation," Wade admits, but the dulcet tones of Gary Wright are blessedly fading away, so that's at least an improvement. Unfortunately, he's not any less glued to the wall. He gives another experimental wriggle, just testing the bonds, but that's, uh. Not exactly helping the situation any. (If by _the situation_ you mean his-) "But honestly think this is about as sane as I get in any continuity, so I'm gonna go with 'yes.'"

"Good to know?" Spiderman says hesitantly. "Look, can I just have, like, two minutes to explain before you go apeshit again?"

Wade wants to protest that he didn't go 'apeshit,' but then he remembers that he did throw a knife at the guy. That was probably poor manners. "The floor is yours."

"Thank you," Spiderman says with dignity. "Okay, so first of all: it's not jizz. It's webbing. I don't _jizz from my hands,_ what kind of porn have you been watching-"

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

" _No._ "

Wade snorts at the appalled look on Spiderman's face. "Fair enough. Continue."

Spiderman eyes him a little suspiciously, but continues. "And second of all, I am not 'creeping' on a strip club. One of the dancers has an ex-boyfriend who just got out on bail from the last time he broke in here to make a scene. I came through the neighborhood, saw the guy's truck over there-" Spiderman points at the nearby lot. "And figured I could hang out for a bit just to make sure he didn't work up the courage to try for round two. I'm _not stalking anyone._ " He breathes out a short, sharp sigh of frustration. "I know I don't always have the best reputation in this city, thank you J. Jonah Jameson, but I promise you. I am not that kind of creep."

_What kind of creep are you,_ Wade thinks reflexively, and then gives himself a mental pinch. _Bad Deadpool. No cookie._

Spiderman grimaces. "Frankly I don't think I could be even if I wanted to, because this shit is exhausting. I don't know how people find the time."

"You'd be surprised," Wade says. "Once you get into a routine, it's actually pretty low maintenance, especially when they have a fairly regular schedule…"

He trails off when he registers that Spiderman is staring at him. _Ah. Yeah. That's what kind of creep *I* am._ "In my defense, there were complicated circumstances. She thought I was dead, I was too much of a coward to tell her otherwise, it was a whole thing." Spiderman's still staring at him. "She's good with it now. She actually works in the club, which is why I was maybe slightly a little oversensitive to you being here, but I promise I have no objections to you stalking for justice, so if you could maybe let me down-" If he doesn't get out of this really incredibly special bondage sharing moment, this conversation is going to get real awkward, real fast. Even the heaviest of spandex only covers but so many sins. "I'll just… be on my way…"

"Holy hell," Spiderman says softly. He comes a couple feet closer. "You're Wade Wilson, aren't you?"

"Um," Wade says, through the sudden and choking feeling of being abruptly exposed. On the plus side, his erection is going down! "No?"

"Shit, I'm sorry, major party foul," Spiderman says, with a sudden grimace. "Look, I know Vanessa, okay? She told me about you- before, I mean. Not, like, told me that you were Deadpool, I had no idea that you were Deadpool and honestly I'm guessing that neither did she? I just mean that she told me she had a boyfriend who died, only he was gone first, so she only _thought_ he died-"

Wade lets out a slow, silent breath of relief. _You didn't slip up. Nobody's going to find her because of you again._

Although he's going to have to ask her how she ran into Spiderman. She's never been much of a superhero groupie, and Spidey's not exactly her usual type. Normally she goes after guys with a bit more bulk (one advantage to his turn as a masked crusader is that he's really built up some of his muscle definition, if he does say so himself) but Spidey's built more like a runner, or a gymnast, all lean frame and wiry muscle. If she was going to fangirl over someone, Wade figures it'd probably be someone more like Colossus.

Ugh, no. Terrible thought. Pretend that never crossed his mind.

Spiderman's still explaining. "-and all things considered it's statistically unlikely that there's someone _else_ who works in this club that has a maybe-dead boyfriend with a lot of combat experience who could have come back to life as a superhero, so-"

"It's cool," Wade interrupts, and means it. _It probably doesn't hurt that the babble is frickin' adorable._ "I'd shake your hand, but-"

"You're still a bit tied up right now?" Spiderman holds up Wade's knife like a peace offering. "If I cut you down, are you going to try and kill me again?"

"I wasn't going to kill you. Maim you a little, at best. It's really hard for people to answer questions when they're dead." Spiderman stares at him. "Yes, please."

"That wasn't technically an answer," Spiderman informs him, but he does cut loose Wade's hands, so obviously he got the message. Or maybe he's just that confident in his abilities. Wade could have told him that he's good, but he's not _that_ good: now that he knows how fast Spidey can actually move, he'll be able to compensate, and this close with his hands free, he's got a veritable _buffet_ of options when it comes to murder.

Instead, he just meekly saws himself the rest of the way free of the wall and steps away, wriggling all over to make sure everything's where it's supposed to be. The step forward puts him even more into Spiderman's space, but Spidey doesn't back off, just tilts his head back and stares up at Wade with the wide, unsettling whites of his masked eyes.

_Man, is it that creepy on me?_ Wade wonders. _Cause that would explain a lot._

"So you're here protecting a stripper from a creep boyfriend," Wade says. It's probably a good thing Spiderman let him down when he did; this conversation would be about ten times more awkward if that erection had time to reach full mast. "Which is… sweet, in a sad sort of way-"

"Thanks," Spiderman says dryly.

"Don't mention it! But why the hell are you just waiting around up here? Go kick his ass."

"I'm getting superhero advice from someone who shut down the freeway for over six hours in order to kill a baker's dozen of goons during rush hour," Spiderman says, apparently to nobody. "My life is officially a farce."

"That happens a lot around me," Wade confides. "You'd be surprised."

"Not really." Spiderman steps away, either tired of craning his neck like that or just generally unwilling to stand so close to someone much larger and more heavily-armed. Actually, is he armed at all? Wade frowns down at him but can't see any weaponry, hidden or otherwise. And that spandex is _really_ tight. Even a garrotte wire would stand out like a tattoo in that thing. "And no, I'm not going to go 'kick his ass.' Not unless he actually tries something. I'm not gonna go punch a guy for what he _might_ do."

_Aww. He's got principals. That's adorable._ "Well, there's your problem," Wade tells him. "Never underestimate the value of preventative discipline, Spider-lad. It's the only thing creeps like this understand."

"Oh yeah? And how'd you figure that out?"

"Well, I don't mean to brag, but dealing with this kind of guy used to be something of a specialty of mine."

Spiderman crosses his arms over his chest. "Probably because you had so much in common."

Wade grins. _Skintight spandex *and* sarcasm? I think I might be in love._ "Well, you know what they say. The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is-"

"Jail time?"

"If you're going to keep stepping on my punch lines like that, I'm gonna have to propose marriage."

"Didn't you try that once already?"

_Low blow,_ Wade thinks, even as Spiderman seems to realize it as well. Both of them pause, heads cocked, at a momentary stalemate. Spiderman breaks first, looking away and rubbing the back of his neck.

"Look, it's like… two in the morning, and I have to be somewhere at eight. You think you know better? You handle it."

"Aww, Spidey, I'm touched," Wade says. He presses his hand to his chest. "Does this count as our first team-up?"

Somehow, the withering look is perfectly clear, even through the mask. "No."

"Yeah, I guess that's fair. It doesn't really count for the sales until someone's saved someone else's life." He grins. "Unless you wanna stick around and save me from Sir Stalksalot down there?"

"Yeah, no." Spidey takes another step back and nods to Wade's outfit. "I'm guessing you can handle yourself, what with all the… murder. And everything."

_Hey now,_ Wade thinks reflexively, _it's not murder if it's on Uncle Sam's dime,_ but then he remembers how he spent the last year and sighs. Can't make that joke anymore. Fuck. "Sure thing, Spidey. Although I usually save the murder for the _really_ bad guys. Like tax collectors."

"I don't think _death_ really counts for 'preventative' discipline," Spiderman points out. Wade would be worried about Spidey not taking him seriously, except he doesn't really want to scare the guy off any further than he already has, so. He'll take what he can get.

"Yeah, not really a lot of opportunity to learn your lesson there," Wade agrees. "Just a little bit of light assault and battery, really put the fear of God into the guy, you know the drill."

"That's… not really my style, but sure." Spidey gives him an up-and-down look so thorough that Wade's pretty sure that he's going to replaying that during his 'personal time' later. "You look like you can handle that."

_Rrrrow._ "Hell yeah I can. I won't even have to take the mask off to do it!"

Spiderman gives him a weird look, and Wade realizes that _right,_ Spidey doesn't know what he looks like underneath. Oh well, not everyone can appreciate his jokes.

The weird look is followed by what looks like it might be a tentative smile, and another couple steps backward. "Look this has been… something, but uh, if you don't mind, I really need to go home and sleep for like, a million years."

"Or until your thing at eight," Wade supplies, because all the magazines say that demonstrating active listening is an ideal quality in a partner. Spidey huffs a quiet laugh that Wade probably wasn't supposed to hear. _Score!_

"Yeah, until my thing at eight." He takes another sidling step backwards. Almost to the edge of the roof now. "Have fun, Deadpool. Just- not too much fun. Legal fun." He's got that slant to the shoulders that Wade intimately recognizes as the universal body language of _why the fuck am I still talking._ "Or whatever. Don't let me tell you how to live your life." He waves his hand awkwardly and takes another step back. "You do you."

Wade eyes the way his heels are up against the roof ledge. "Uh, Spidey-"

Spiderman grins at him, widely enough that Wade definitely doesn't have any problems telling _that_ under the mask. Whether it's an honest smile or just relief that the conversation is about to be over, Wade can't quite tell. He's more concerned with the four stories of open air behind him and the two inches of concrete that's all that separates him and being road pizza.

"Seriously, you should probably-"

"Tell Vanessa I said hi," Spiderman says, and then does a backflip off the edge.

"What the _shit,_ " Wade says, but a moment later Spidey reappears, swinging on some kind of cable or something in the air above the street. "What the shit!" he says, and rushes to the edge, just in time to see Spidey do a happy-looking little backflip at the height of his swing and then shoot another rope of white stuff out of his wrist. It sticks to a building halfway down the block and off he goes, swinging around the corner and out of sight.

_[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-VnjtQhKc0&t=2m36s) Girl it must be a crime to be as fine as you_  
_You know exactly what I'm tryin' to do...[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-VnjtQhKc0&t=2m36s)_

Wade stares after him for longer than he'd like to admit. Finally, he puts a hand to the edge and vaults himself up to sit on it, resting his elbows on his knees and staring down at the back door to the Kitty Catt.

_[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-VnjtQhKc0&t=3m08s) Come on baby keep on doing what you're doing_  
_come on baby keep doing what you're doing...[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-VnjtQhKc0&t=3m08s)_

"Holy fuck," he says finally, after a couple of minutes have passed. "That was the greatest ass I've ever seen."

**~*~**

_Heels,_ Vanessa thinks, kicking them off as soon as she gets through the door. _Heels were the devil's invention._ Long shifts, she can handle; creeper customers, she can handle with pleasure; heels, she could happily drop-kick and set them on fire. At least when she was still making her living off of drunk mercenaries at Sister M's, nobody much cared if she wore her boots. Much better arch support in those. Waaaaay better for your back.

There's a crumpled heap of red and black fabric just inside the door, and she grins as she shrugs out of her coat and hangs it up on the hook. "Hi honey, I'm hooome," she carols, and pads around the folding wall, already unbuttoning her shirt. "I missed you when I left earlier, did you get sidetracked by-"

She stops. Looks at the bed. Looks at the towel next to the bed. Looks at the nightstand, where the stuffed unicorn has been turned to face the wall.

Narrows her eyes at Wade, who is doing a very bad job pretending to be asleep.

"Okay, seriously, what did you get sidetracked by?"

Wade yawns and stretches, pretending to "wake up," which gives her a good enough view that she's willing to let it slide. The long-sleeved t-shirt is disappointing but not unexpected, but at least it's tight enough to get a good look at the muscles underneath. And at least she got him to stop wearing that fucking sweatshirt to bed. Rome wasn't built in a day, et cetera.

The really important question is if he put his pants back on.

"So I've been thinking about this apartment," he says, propping himself up on his elbows, "and I'm thinking maybe we should move somewhere a little roomier? You know, space for some exercise equipment, maybe a washer and dryer- you know how I feel about landromats-"

"-maybe some actual walls for the bathroom-"

"-a stove with more than one burner-"

"Hey, you know me, I pack light," Vanessa says with a shrug, and comes to sit on the end of the bed. "You're the one with all the shit to move." And truth be told, she'd be more than happy to get the hell out of this place. She hadn't been able to make herself leave after Wade was gone, not when surrounding herself in his home and his stuff was the only way she got through the day sometimes, but now that he's back it just feels- wrong. Like a reminder of the grief she's not supposed to feel anymore. "And the one with all the free time to go apartment-hunting."

Wade hits her with the doe eyes. "But honey bunny, how will I know our perfect home without you?"

She gives him her brightest smile in return. "Well, bubble-butt, slap a pole in the middle and I'll feel right at home!"

He wrinkles his nose. "So that's a no on the pet names?"

"Find a good one and we'll talk." She shrugs out of his coat and tosses it over the back of the nearby chair. "So seriously though. Who did you meet, and how hot were they, exactly? I'm looking for a number between one and ten."

Wade grins, pleased as ever to have been caught out. "I don't know about the total package, Nessa, but that ass was a perfect ten."

She tilts her head. "That's a bold statement, Cotton."

"I'm serious! Like, okay. Baby. You have an amazing ass. Top five I've ever seen, hands down. We've established this."

"At great length," she agrees, and starts unbuttoning her shirt. "There was poetry involved." He opens his mouth. "That was not an invitation to start quoting."

"Spoilsport," he pouts. "Okay, but tonight. Tonight, Vanessa, I have seen the face of heaven, and what do you know! It wasn't a _face_ at all. It was just-" He seems to momentarily run out of words, and just holds his hands up illustratively, kneading at thin air with a dreamy expression on his face. "And spandex! I really think the spandex was overkill, and I'd _know_ from overkill."

Her fingers go still on her buttons. "Wade. You didn't go drive up to Westchester, did you?"

"What? No! I wouldn't have them on a gift, c'mon."

She raises an eyebrow. "So the spandex…"

"Was on an independent player! Actually, turns out he's a friend of yours."

_Who is he talking abou- Oh._

"I think I'm hurt, Vanessa," Wade says seriously. "You saw a booty like that, and you were just going to keep it all to yourself?"

"'Keeping it all to myself' implies that I'm hitting that," she says, and gives him her best tragic face. "Which I'm not. He doesn't seem the type to bang in costume."

"His loss," says Wade, with the staggering hypocrisy of someone who hasn't yet given her the particular pleasure of climbing him like a very well-muscled red-and-black tree. She shoots him an unimpressed look to remind him of the fact, and he looks away, clearing his throat. "So how'd you meet him, anyway?"

"You first," she says, and goes back to unbuttoning her shirt. Weirdly, it had never occurred to her that Wade and Spiderman would cross paths. It probably should have. But she hasn't seen Spiderman since a couple weeks before Wade came crashing back into her life, and she just kind of- hasn't really had the time to think about anything else. Probably she should have mentioned it before now. Eh, well. "He didn't catch you shooting someone, did he? He doesn't seem like the type to approve of that sort of thing."

"Yeah, he's got the whole 'with great power' thing going for him," Wade agrees. "No shooting. I saw him creeping on the roof near the club and went to explain my opinion on stalkers-"

"It's a position you have reserved for yourself?"

"Obviously, and then there was perhaps a slightly amount of scuffling- no wrestling, get your mind out of the gutter- and then I found out he was on creep patrol for one of the dancers. Which is quite nice of him, really, and even nicer that he let me go beat up the creep for him, so I'm thinking-"

She holds up a hand to cut him off. Not that she isn't enjoying the story, but _priorities._ "Is the creep still alive?"

"Of course," he says, waving that away so dismissively she wants to point out that hello, she's met him, who's he trying to fool, but then he adds, "It's not _fun_ to kill them when they're begging," which causes her to nod and sit back, because yeah, that makes more sense. "Also, I told Spidey I wouldn't."

_Ah, so it's *that* kind of crush._

She lowers her hand. "Okay, continue."

"Thank you," he says with dignity. "As first meetings go, I think I did pretty well! Only a modicum of violence, nobody got stabbed or shot, nobody tried to take anybody to jail, it was almost friendly. And he said to tell you hi, by the way, I think I probably should have led with that. He was nice."

She twists the ring on her thumb, smiling quietly. "He _is_ nice. I ran into him a few months back, while you were still-"

"....Indisposed?" Wade supplies.

"Hiding away like a giant fucking coward?" she corrects, and he winces.

"I might resemble that remark."

They've had this fight a couple times, and she's not really interested in rehashing it now, so she just sighs again and lets it go. "Some creeps were trying to follow me from home from the club, and Spiderman stopped them when they tried to follow me into an alley."

Wade tilts his head, reeking of skepticism. "So you're saying Spiderman saved you from a pair of thugs with ill-intent?" He presses his hand to his chest. "Darling. Sweetums. Honeybunches. We've got something special, you'n me, and you know I'd never accuse you of lying, but-"

He knows her so well. "Well, I had one of your backup pieces in my purse," she says with a shrug, trying not to smile, "so it's possible Spiderman saved a pair of thugs with ill-intent from _me._ "

" _There's_ my girl." Wade takes her hands in his and gives her his best soulful look. "Was it Black Betty? Tell me it was Black Betty."

"Big enough to blow a hole the size of a cat in the guy?"

"That's my baby! _Whooa-oh, Black Betty, bam-ba-lam,"_ he sings. His eyes glaze over a little. "Holy shit, do you still have her? I'd love to see my two favorite ladies getting up close and personal, ifyouknowhatImean."

She snaps her fingers in front of his nose. "Stick with me, babe, story's not done yet."

"Right, right." He blinks and comes back to her. "So, Spiderman, saving you from a murder charge, I'm with you." He rubs his thumb over the jut of her wrist bone. "Mmmm, murder."

She snorts and shoves at him. "Save it for your 'me time,' champ. You should be thanking Spiderman. Just think how much harder it would have been to stalk me if I was in jail for homicide with an illegal weapon."

"What can I say, sometimes you want good old Yankee ingenuity, but for blowing a motherfucker away you just can't beat Mother Russia." He leans back and folds his hands behind his head. "I would have made a great prison husband, by the way. Just think of the possibilities."

"I think after the first five felony warrants they're not feeling too willing to let you back _out_ after the conjugal visit."

"That's so unfair," he complains. "I'm really more of the antihero archetype than a villain. You'd think they'd forgive a little murder."

She gives him a speaking look. "A _little_ murder?"

He clears his throat. "Weren't you telling me about Spiderman?"

"Hottie in spandex knocks out thugs, grateful damsel puts the extremely illegal handgun back in her purse, hottie in spandex offers to walk her home," Vanessa recites, and shrugs. "There's not really much else to the story."

Wade arches an eyebrow at her. "You sure about that? 'Cause he seemed to know you pretty well. Well enough that he was able to guess my name inside of about five minutes."

_Aww, shit._ Bad enough that she went and got herself kidnapped like some kind of damsel in an action movie, but if she managed to retroactively out his secret identity before he's been back for a month, she's not going to be able to live with the cliche she's become. "Is it going to be a problem?"

"He's way too noble for blackmail," he says, but he sounds just a bit too casual. Bothered and trying not to be, would be her guess. Well, nothing much she can do about it now. "I'm more interested in how you got to talking to him in the first place. You're not really the type to play the grateful damsel."

"Aww," she says, genuinely touched, and pats his knee. "Yeah, no, not really my style. I just see him once in a while, when he's patrolling through the area. He keeps the crime rate down, which is good for business, so Andy lets me give him some extra food to take him once a week or so."

"So, food," Wade says to himself, "that's good to know." Then he tilts his head. "But you like him, though, right? It's not just a suddenly developed feeder fetish or something?"

She arches an eyebrow at him. "Not as much as you do, I bet."

He waves that away. "I mean, you told him about little ol' _moi,_ so you must like him at least a little. I know that we tend to use TMI as a lifestyle choice, but-" She reaches up to flick him on the nose. "That was uncalled for."

"Uh-huh," she says dryly. And then, "I like him fine. He's a funny guy. Clever. Sarcastic. _You_ might know a thing or two about that."

"You do have a type," he agrees. "Though he's a little on the small side of drool-worthy for you."

"Not everything's about sex," she says. Smirks when she meets his gaze. "And consider that, coming from _me…_ "

"I know, right." He drums his fingers against her knee. "So he's… what, a friend of yours?"

Wade always thinks he's more subtle than he actually is, which is both adorable and hilarious. "Something like that. I mean, I don't know his name or anything, but he's fun. If I can get away from my tables I usually try and go out back when he comes by, hang out and chat for a bit. You know."

"Girl talk," Wade says with a happy sigh, and then flinches when she flicks his nose again. "Ow. Rude."

"Your face is rude."

"Hey now," he says with no heat. "Watch it with your truthiness." She makes an apologetic face, which he returns. "So you're buddies with Spiderman. That's... kind of awesome, actually."

"I try," she says, walking her fingers up his blanket-covered shin. She's pretty sure he's got pants on. Semi-sure. Hmm. "Though I haven't seen him in a while. The last time was about a week before you came back, actually."

She's still not sure how she feels about the last time. She probably went over some sort of line, gotten too personal, but it had felt so _good_ to just- let it out. It was raining, and she was kind of drunk, and she was feeling Wade's ghost particularly strongly that week, like everywhere she went he was just around the corner. And she'd gone outside with Spidey's thank-you meal, and he'd made some joke about cold fries that she remembered Wade making on their fourth date, and she'd told him that, and he'd just nodded, like people told him about their dead exes every day. And then she'd just started talking, telling him story after story, like there was any chance in the world he'd actually care. Wade had been dead and gone and _still fucking bothering her,_ and she'd needed to tell _someone_ and she couldn't tell it to someone who'd known him, couldn't bear to talk to someone who'd just nod and go, "Yep, that's Wade all right," like they fucking knew anything about him. Like anyone goddamn had.

And Spidey had listened. He'd probably had a million other things to do, like oh maybe _fight some crime,_ but he'd just hung out there for like half an hour, listening to her ramble like a complete fucking mess. And he hadn't tried to say the nice things, or make her feel better. He'd just listened, and she hadn't even realized how much she'd needed that. To have someone listen to _her_ sob story, for a change. To have someone care about her bullshit, or at least do a damn good job of pretending.

She'd gotten a reaming for leaving her tables behind for so long, but it had been totally worth it. She even picked up a bottle of the good stuff to give him as a thank-you, but then she was out of work for a couple weeks and hadn't had a chance. ( _Thank you, Wade, for your superhero bullshit and the five stitches in my hand._ ) She'll just have to give it to him next time she sees him. Tonight's proof-positive that he's still doing patrol through the neighborhood.

"Well, I approve," Wade declares. "He seems _adorable._ A tremendously wholesome influence for you."

"God knows I don't get it at home," she agrees, and taps his knee with her thumb. _Damn it,_ he's definitely still got sweatpants on. "He's a sweet kid, but don't worry. You're still my very favorite costumed weirdo."

"Awww," he says. "I'm touched. Literally, I've been touching myself. Did you know he stuck me to the wall? Holy bondage, Batman, just think of the possibilities."

Up against a wall, huh. On his back has been a serious no-go even without anything pinning him, but they hadn't tried upright. _Thank you, Spiderman, for the excellent idea._ After all, the first time they fucked was up against the wall right next to the front door. It only seems appropriate to indulge in a little nostalgia, right?

She grins and runs her hand up Wade's thigh. He's definitely gotten off once already, so maybe if she can get just get his motor running again...

"He's incredibly bendy, too, you know."

"Oh my god, really? That's just unfair." Wade lets his head loll back, his eyes glazing over, but she doesn't miss the nervous twitch when her hand threatens to roam a little higher. She gives his thigh a quick pat and withdraws. No good tactician should underestimate the value of a well-timed retreat. "And that _ass,_ oh my god. I hope you're not offended, because objectively speaking-"

She takes advantage of his distraction to undo the last button on her shirt, one-handed, and tug it open. She arches an eyebrow at him in challenge. "I think I'm okay with it."

Wade's eyes give him away, just a quick flicker to her face for permission, and that's going to stop breaking her heart aaaaany day now. When she gives him a tiny smile in return, he dives for her, knocking her back with his hands on her breasts and his mouth buried in the crook of her neck. She shrieks with laughter as she goes down, sprawling over the end of the mattress and trying not to kick anywhere too sensitive, and pretends that she doesn't hear his little sigh of relief at her failure to flinch.

She cranes her neck to brush a kiss across the top of his bare head. It's only been a few weeks. "As long as I've still got the best tits around, I think I'll call it even."

"Hell _yeah_ you do," Wade mumbles into her neck, kneading happily. "Mmm."

"Besides, you're not wrong." Spidey isn't really much her type, but she can appreciate good art as much as the next gal, without wanting to fuck the painting. And that spandex definitely does not hide _a goddamn thing._ "That ass is _outstanding._ "

Wade pops up and grins at her. "I know, right? It's like two ripe peaches nestled together."

She snorts. "So how many times did you jerk off thinking about it before I got home?" A suspicious silence. "Wade, the unicorn of shame never lies."

"Curse my crude yet predictable quirkiness," he agrees. "Twice. No, three times."

Bless Wade and his exciting new refractory period. Sadly, of which she has yet to be able to really take proper advantage. Whelp, as the muppet said: _Do or do not, there is no try._

"Think you're up for round four?"

It's a long shot, given that he put his pants back on when he went to bed, but still, there's a moment where she think he's going to go for it. But then he glances away, something like shame tightening the line of his shoulders, and she curses inwardly. Pushed too far.

Not that she ever thought it'd be a possibility, but if someone had asked her what it would be like to shack up with your ex post-resurrection, she probably wouldn't have guessed this. Some of it's about his looks, sure- even a lot of it- but insecurity doesn't account for everything. It doesn't explain why sometimes he'll be so desperate for touch that it's like he's trying to crawl inside her, when other times he'll sleep on the couch because he can't stand the contact. Or how weird he's gotten about temperature, fiddling with the thermostat until she wants to strangle him. Or how he'll always find a way to flip them if he winds up on his back.

She understands about the landmines your body can leave. A lot of clients go to a working girl because they don't know how to ask for it at home, and she's handled just about everything under the sun, at some point or another. She's not going to judge and she's not going to ask, because if he wants her to know he'll fucking tell her. She gets it. She knows how to wait for the things that she wants.

Doesn't mean it's not frustrating as hell sometimes. She shifts and feels the wet slide between her legs, presses her thighs together under the bulk of his weight. _Really_ frustrating, sometimes.

Something about what she's thinking must show on her face, because Wade ducks his head quickly, presses a kiss to the side of her neck. It's there, where she can't see his face, that he offers, "But I could help you catch up on rounds one and two, and, uh, see how it goes for three?"

Sometimes, getting her off will get him worked up enough to give it a try. It's not the same as it used to be, but they're getting there. Slowly.

"I think that sounds like a hell of a plan," she says, and runs a hand down his back. Even through the soft fabric of the t-shirt she can still feel the knots and divots and rough whirls of the scar tissue, but it's honestly not that startling anymore, and way less interesting than the breadth of new, heavier muscle underneath. Wade's always been a lot of fun to touch. The fact that this skin's got a new texture doesn't really change that fact, not when he's arching up into her hand like a cat begging to be petted. "Hell, if you're _really_ good, I'll sing you the Spiderman theme song during round two."

Wade's breath hitches in something not quite a laugh but not entirely unlike a moan, either. "Spiderman, Spiderman," he breathes into her ear, and she grins against his jaw, knowing she's won.

"Does whatever a spider can," she agrees, and bites his neck. "Get to it, loverboy. I don't have all night."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's supposed to be "Spider-Man." I have been reminded multiple times of this fact. But I refuse to do it. I'm sorry, I just do. Literally nobody pronounces the hyphen. NOBODY. The only person I can picture actually saying it that way is, like, bad Shakespearean villains, and who wants to associate themselves with that? It turns out that this is the hill I'm willing to die on. Sorry. (Sort of sorry.)
> 
> Song credits:
> 
> -"Dream Weaver" by Gary Michael.
> 
> -"Booty Wurk (One Cheek at a Time)" by T-Pain
> 
> -"Black Betty" by Ram Jam
> 
> And, of course:
> 
> -"The Spider-Man Theme Song," by Paul Francis Webber and Robert "Bob" Harris.


	2. ISSUE TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Wade gets a date, Peter gets tacos, and nobody gets killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really need to set this chapter free because all I've done lately is open it up, stare blankly at it, change one word, and then go back to staring blankly. This is not good for my productivity.

1:32 am. Peter crouches on the fire escape and closes his eyes, letting his senses spool out as far as they can go. Nothing. Zip, zilch, nada. Crime's been surprisingly quiet in this neighborhood for the last couple weeks, so maybe if he can go, like, ten more minutes without anything happening, he can go home and study for his-

"Help! Motherfucker, _help!_ "

Peter looks up at the cloudless sky. "I know that scientifically jinxes don't exist," he says, and stands up to spin up his shooters. "But seriously? Fuck you."

The call for help came from only a couple blocks away, and Peter's there in just a couple swings, dropping down to the side of the building and sticking there so he can figure out what's going on. There's two figures at the end of the alley, locked in the standard criminal embrace: one smaller guy with his back against the wall, and a much bigger one pinning him there. The outfit on the bigger guy, on the other hand, is a little less than standard-issue. As are the swords sheathed crosswise over his back.

_The universe,_ Peter thinks, _is a very weird place._

"Hey," he calls, and Deadpool freezes, head swivelling around to face him. Peter hopes like hell that the mask hides his nervous grimace, and tries to keep his voice casual. "Long time no see."

"Spidey!" Deadpool says, with all evidence of genuine delight. "And here I was wondering how to track a spider down. Three cheers for narrative-driven coincidences, eh?"

_This is not my day._

It was bad enough running afoul of Deadpool near the club last week, when Peter'd had every intention of avoiding the new kill-happy mask in town. Worse yet when Deadpool ran into him under somewhat awkward circumstances, and worst of all when he realized that the man under the red mask was none other than Wade Wilson, Vanessa's weird, dangerous, _supposedly dead_ ex. Double the reason for Peter to avoid tangling with him. Things had gotten awkward enough with the one person who ever talked to Spiderman like he was an actual person, without him getting into a fight with her probably-not-so-former-anymore boyfriend. Peter had made very good plans to steer clear.

Well, that lasted an entire week. _Good job, Petey. Maybe don't try to play the lottery anytime soon, huh?_

He eyes the swords on Deadpool's back and calculates his odds. They aren't great. "Do I need to call in the X-Men, here?"

The expression of comic dismay is so clear Peter can read it through the mask at twenty paces. "Why the fuck would you do a thing like that?"

_Because you don't seem like the kind of guy who likes to get interrupted, and I'm not in the mood to get stabbed today._ He's fast, but he doesn't fool himself that he'd be able to get the drop on Deadpool a second time. He still remembers the way his spidey-sense had gone haywire when he'd let Wade loose on the rooftop the other week. There's no doubt in his mind that if Deadpool had been in a slightly less forgiving mood, Peter would have been a spider-kebab right about then.

"The last time you got in a fight, the X-Men plane showed up to stop you," he says, starting to inch closer. If he's going to pull _anything_ off, he needs to be in range. "I'm just figuring they've got jurisdiction."

"Jurisdiction, schurisdiction," Deadpool scoffs. "Just because they want me in the boy band doesn't mean I'm playing ball. Wait, I think I mixed my metaphors a little there."

In spite of his better judgement, Peter can't resist the urge to hold up his thumb and forefinger, an inch apart. "Just a scoche."

Deadpool smirks up at him, thankfully amused rather than offended. "Everyone's a critic. Look, there's no need for heroing here today, mmkay? I've got it taken care of."

Peter looks skeptically from him to his target. The guy has "thug, and not even the classy kind" written all over him, but that doesn't mean he deserves…. whatever Deadpool might do to him. _You left him to handle Crystal's douchebag ex just last week,_ he reminds himself. _Isn't it a little hypocritical to get worried about it now?_

On the other hand, Deadpool had pretty much promised him to keep it low-key last week, too. The guy he's got slammed up against a wall right now, Peter's a lot less sure about.

"I wasn't really that worried about you."

Deadpool pouts. "That hurts, babycakes. I wanna be your one and only." He waggles his eyebrows ludicrously, and Peter has to bite down on the sudden well of laughter at the back of his throat. _Don't laugh at the crazy killer, Peter. Even if he seems to really want you to._ "I'm not just shakin' some bros down for cash, Spidey my good man, I'm here on business. Cookie here ain't exactly what you'd call an upstanding citizen, now are ya, Cook? He's got a real taste for the local working girls, ifyouknowwhatImean, and he's not a real big fan of paying for it, either. And if they try and _make_ him pay, well, that's just a good excuse, isn't it, Cookie?"

Peter eyes the thug with new disfavor. Aside from a few stray muggings or B &E's, most of what he does as Spiderman on a daily basis is to break up fights between mobsters and drug dealers, gang violence, the usual shit. Nobody deserves to have bad things happen to them, but there's a certain emotional distance when you know that the guy you save from a bullet today is just as likely to be the guy with a gun tomorrow. You get used to it after a while.

But he's got a real goddamn problem with people who prey on the weak for kicks. Just because Peter got strong enough to hit back doesn't mean everyone can. _Or_ that they should have to.

"Fuck… off…." the other guy wheezes, and Deadpool grins his manic grin and leans in close.

"You were thinking hey, those girls aren't connected, what the fuck are they going to do? And you made sure they didn't have a dime between the lot of 'em, so it's not like they're gonna hire someone to do their dirty work, right? Good planning, as far as a brain-dead little chucklefuck like you can manage. Except, oh wait, here I am!"

"Deadpool," Peter says quietly, because at the end of the day it doesn't matter what the guy's done. Peter doesn't have it in him to stand by and watch someone get killed when he has a chance to stop it.

"Just a minute, sugarbritches," Deadpool says distractedly. "You were right about one thing- they didn't have enough money for a gold card. But you know what? I've been really bored lately. Once you've gone after one international criminal organization, it's all downhill from there, you know? So I needed a bit of a pick-me-up. I took it pro-bono."

"Deadpool," Peter says, more urgently this time, and crouches more tightly against the wall. Ready to spring. "You know I'm not going to let you kill that guy."

Finally, finally he has Deadpool's attention again, and that masked face swivels to look at him in what seems like honest puzzlement. "What, him?" Deadpool says, and shakes Cookie by his lapels. "Aww, Spidey, really?"

Peter glances from him to the thug, and then back. The milky white of the eyes of Deadpool's mask seem to stare back at him in the low alley light. Is this the hill he's going to die on? Possibly literally?

"Yeah. Really."

There's a little tilt to Deadpool's head that's almost… impressed. "That's good to know," he says, and then eases a half step back from Cookie, although he keeps him pinned against the wall. "Well, as much fun as it'd be to dance with you, sour patch, you can slow your roll. I'm not here to kill the little cockroach."

Peter can't help but glance at the weaponry he's carrying. "Oh yeah?"

Deadpool catches the direction of his glance and clears his throat. "Those are for self-defense."

_Don't smile, don't smile, don't smile-_ "The best defense is good offense?"

"See, I knew I liked you!" Deadpool says. "Seriously though, can you cool it with the 'death from above' routine? It's starting to wig me out."

Peter takes a semi-shameful second to preen internally over the backhanded compliment to his threatening posture. He had to put a lot of work into that, okay. Skinny, undersized nerds aren't really naturally socialized for that sort of thing.

_Okay, moment over, back to the banter._ "To be fair, you did kill, like. A lot of people." His gaze strays back to the swords and then skitters away again. "Recently."

Deadpool looks briefly nonplussed. "You heard about-"

Peter gives him a disbelieving look. " _Everyone_ heard about that."

"Okay yes, so I did kill- okay yeah a lot of guys, but those were literal slavers, they were- you know what, it was a whole… thing. I'll do the off-screen recap later, mmkay? Important takeaway: I'm not here to unalive this weasely little fuck."

"Hey, you can't talk about me like- urk!"

"Grownups are talking, Keebler," Deadpool says. His forearm looks even more brawny when pressed up against Cookie's windpipe like that, and his masked face look oddly serious as he peers up the wall at Peter. "And for the record, even if I _did_ come here to kill this cumstain- which I didn't, because I'm being positively angelic these days- I wouldn't do it in front of you, hero."

Peter swallows. Wade's just more or less told him that he wouldn't feel too bad if he _did_ kill the guy, that he'd care a lot more about doing it in front of Peter than he would taking a life. It's not something he should find reassuring.

But he does.

 _He was a fucked up kinda guy,_ Vanessa told him, the last time he saw her. _But that didn't stop him from being the best one I knew._

"Uh. I appreciate it."

"No problemo!" Deadpool- no, _Wade,_ says cheerfully. It's impossible to hear him say stuff like that and forget that whatever else he is, he's also Vanessa's Wade, who crushed at skee ball and got suspiciously misty-eyed watching _My Little Pony_ and had a weird sexual obsession with _Golden Girls._ The same guy she cried over, when she had her back to Peter and thought he couldn't hear. "I wasn't looking forward to fighting with you either, unless you maybe wanna do it for fun sometime. You've got some moves, gumdrop. It's not often someone can get the drop on me like you did last week."

The compliment to his fighting skills warms him more than he'd like to admit. Wade's obviously- really good, okay. _Really_ good. Peter's never seen him in action directly but everybody and their grandmother's cat saw the bridge footage- at least what there was of it to see, before the X-Men plane showed up and all of the news helicopters promptly got the hell out of dodge. It was carnage, yeah, but it was- impressive carnage.

"Yeah," he says. No one caught it on camera, but rumor was that the fight started when Deadpool dropped more than a hundred feet into the back of a moving vehicle on a freeway. Peter's got no false modesty about his skills, not after four years as a mask, but he's pretty sure he couldn't have done that on his best day. "I don't really want to get stabbed, either."

"Good call, it fuckin' sucks." Wade turns back to the thug still pinned casually against the wall. "Look, Romeo, you're in luck. The old lady keeps nagging at me not to add to my number of open warrants and you've got a gen-yoo-ine hero hanging out makin' sure I play nice, so right now we're having a conversation. In about, oh, six hours, the cops're gonna show up at your place with an arrest warrant, and _they're_ going to want a conversation. And _this_ conversation is to tell you that _that_ conversation had better end in a confession, or I'm going to find you and we'll have _another_ conversation, at which point, hey, what's another warrant, you know? Once you pass the double-digits, it's all sort of a downhill slide."

Cookie swallows visibly, and Wade leans in, really close. "Or hey, maybe we'll go old-school, hammer your abi with a little hand-for-a-hand. Or maybe some other appendages. We can draw straws! Doesn't that sound like fun?"

"Fuck you, you goddamned-"

Wade casually punches him in the side of the head. Peter flinches, but the thug just looks dazed. "I don't think I heard you."

"Fuck off and die," Cookie spits, and Wade shrugs, steps back and lets him drop.

"Eh, close enough." He puts both hands to his hips and grins up at Peter. "So hey, how'd you feel about grabbing something to eat? I know a great Mexican joint around the corner."

Peter's groping for a polite way to decline the offer, because it's more tempting than he'd like to admit but he can't see any way that _that_ could end well, when he feels the familiar tingle of danger run up his spine. He frowns at Wade, but that's not it. He's not the threat here, weird as that seems. So what-

The tingle hits the back of his skull and detonates like a supernova, and Peter's turning, dropping, and shooting web before he entirely registers the glint of metal out of the corner of his eye. He lands in a crouch, facing Cookie, who's falling back with a muffled grunt, one hand glued to the holster inside his jacket and the other stuck fast to the wall. Peter holds the ready position for a moment, waiting for him to try something else, but his instincts are quiet again and when Cookie just lies there and groans he cautiously straightens upward.

The whole thing took less than five seconds. Wade's still standing in the same position. He hasn't even reached for any of his weapons, and he's gaping at Peter so obviously that it shows even through his mask. "Spidey," he says. There's something in his voice, some undercurrent of emotion Peter can't quite identify. "Spidey, Spidey, Spidey."

Peter swallows and wishes, not for the first time, that this costume had some pockets. He can't quite figure out what to do with his hands. "Yeah?"

A huge grin spreads over the other man's masked face. " _Did you ever know, that you're my heeeero?"_ Wade carols, and slings an arm around his shoulder. Peter flinches instinctively, more out of surprise than anything else, but if Wade notices then he doesn't take offense, just gives him a happy squeeze and scruffs his palm over the top of Peter's cowl. "Aww, lookit you, and here I thought I was totally going to get the first superhero save of our little team-up. I mean, not that the guy coulda killed me, but still! You don't know that yet! I'm feelin' the love, Spider-lad, really I am. You're definitely getting dinner for this."

Wade's grip doesn't feel like it's letting up anytime soon, and Peter doesn't really have much of a choice but to let himself be turned and led out of the alley. Or, well, he could probably get free if he really tried: there's a fire escape just up ahead, he could jab Wade in the ribs, drop downwards and roll, get a web off and get up out of Wade's range. Simple enough, especially since Wade would be slow to strike back.

But he knows he's not going to. It's not like he's delusional enough to think that Wade is anything less than incredibly dangerous- he's got the warrants to prove that he's not exactly carrying those weapons for show and tell- but he can't seem to make himself believe that Wade is any kind of threat to _him,_ specifically. He doesn't normally let people put their hands on him, but Wade's got him fast and his Spidey-sense isn't making a peep. If anything, it's quieter than usual, like that hindbrain part of him that recognizes threats knows that Peter's safer next to another predator than he's ever going to be on his own.

Spiders are solitary creatures, as a breed. But people aren't.

Also, he's really fucking hungry.

His stomach growls, as if to announce his defeat, and Wade glances down at it, grinning. "I hear ya, buddy," he says. "All this fighting crime really works up an appetite. Say, how do you feel about tacos?"

**~*~**

Much later, when Peter will have the time and space to wonder _how the hell did my life end up like this,_ he's going to look back at this moment and think, _yep, that's when I fucked up._ He could have run away, like any sensible person faced with a large, heavily armed nutjob with thirty-two active homicide warrants. He could have said "thanks but no thanks, enjoy your tacos," and made like a tree, gone home to his postage stamp dorm room and eaten the last box of instant-mac and called it a day, just like any other night after patrol. He could have, at bare minimum, separated himself from the chattering weirdo currently plastered along his side, and at least gone to get his free food with some semblance of dignity.

But he didn't. Instead, he let Wade drag him along with his arm over his shoulder, smelling overwhelmingly of leather and gun oil and putting off heat like a radiator, rambling on about the perfect taco, and tacos he had in other countries, and had you ever had a taco in Peru, Spidey, there's this little town out in the middle of the fuckin' jungle with the best goddamn food he's ever had, almost made the cartels worth it even though he lost his favorite gun on that op-

So yeah, that's Peter's biggest goddamn mistake: Wade started acting like Spiderman is his new best friend, and Peter just fuckin' let him do it.

"-and that's how I ended up the charming fellow you see before you," Wade finishes, around a messy bite of taco. "Gruesome, right?"

"That's one word for it," Peter agrees. _Fucked up_ is probably the way he'd have put it, personally, but Wade was also pretty clearly trying to downplay the whole thing, so Peter's not going to be the asshole who doesn't play along. He can read between the lines pretty well, and all the jokes in the world can't make "tortured for weeks for fun and profit" any more palatable. Wade's had a fucked-up year.

Wade gives him a sideways look. "Too gruesome?"

Peter knows what he's really asking. Wade hadn't hesitated over his kill count during his dramatic reenactment, but he'd been side-eyeing Peter during, like he was waiting to get kicked off the roof. Not really a surprise, given that Peter made a big deal about not letting him kill Cookie earlier.

But Peter's not going to judge. It's probably a bad sign for his superhero morals that he's willing to let the killing spree slide just because of the motive- he's never been a big fan of justifiable homicide- but Peter's never been really much good at absolute morality, either. His aunt and uncle raised him to believe in ideals, but four years on the streets have tempered that with a healthy dose of pragmatism. It's not like there's much he can do about it now, and it's not really Peter's place to judge, either. Especially not after the fact.

"Nope," he says, and takes a bite of his taco. "I gotta admit that I'm curious, though. You seriously just- can't die? How does that even work?"

"Do I look like a fuckin' scientist?" Wade says, but the angle of his shoulders signals relief. It mattered to him, what Peter thought. Peter's not really sure how to feel about that yet. "I dunno. I get hurt, I heal. I'm not about to keel over from cancer anymore. I look like a circus sideshow extra. All comes out in the wash."

They're up on top of the roof of the restaurant, working their way through two giant bags of takeout. Wade was the one who went in to get the food- Peter's never gotten comfortable enough to do stuff like that in costume- but he was also the one who suggested they eat up on the roof, out of the way of any potential gawkers. He made it sound like he was doing it for Peter's benefit, but it's pretty impossible to eat something in a full-face mask without at least rolling it up to your nose, and Peter's pretty sure that Wade mostly wanted to be up here because it was above the street lights. Peter doesn't have the heart to tell him that his night vision is good enough that he can still see the mottled scar tissue covering the other man's jaw and throat, no matter how low the lighting is.

Peter doesn't stare. He's seen worse, and besides, these tacos are _really_ good.

"No but like, what if you were shot in the head? Would you regrow your head?"

Wade swivels to look at him directly for the first time since he'd pulled up part of his mask. Peter squirms slightly at the sudden attention, but then Wade just grins at him and goes back to his food. "You're a bit of a sick fuck, aren't ya, Spidey?"

"I- not really?" Peter says, and takes a bite of taco to cover his hesitation. Mmm, food. Food he didn't have to pay for. _God,_ he feels like he hasn't gotten a proper meal in days. "It's just interesting?"

Wade snorts. "How'd you figure, Spiderlet?"

Peter purses his lips to convey his opinion of the nickname, but when Wade just shrugs he decides to let it go. "Well, biologically, you'd think you'd need some remaining control scheme for your central nervous system. And do things come back as an exact copy of what they were before? If your head did grow back, would you still be the same person? Or! What about your memories, would those regenerate too?"

"I think you're putting way too much thought into this," Wade tells him, but Peter notices that he's looking away. "Who the fuck knows, anyway. Not too eager to test it out, if that's all the same to you."

Peter winces. _Right. Good job, Peter. Way to put your foot in your mouth._ "No, I didn't mean-"

"It's all about plot contrivance, anyway," Wade continues, heedless of his interruption. "I'll come back from anything because no one ever dies for real once they've got their own title. Hell, the only one who ever stays dead is-" He shuts his jaw with a snap, then turns and takes an ostentatious bite of his taco. "So how'd you end up with this gig?" he says, chewing noisily. "Shouldn't you be with the X-Men or something?"

Peter allows him to change the subject because honestly, he doesn't really want to know. So the dude thinks he's in a comic book; Peter's seen weirder things. "I'm not a mutant; they're a mutants-only group. It's kind of their whole deal."

"Yeah, I know, that's why ol' chrome-dome keeps after me to join them, even though I'm really more of an aftermarket special rather than _holy crap,_ what do you mean you're not a mutant?"

Wade looks so honestly startled that Peter can't help but laugh. "No X gene. Not even recessive; I checked a while back at a campus testing program. Just to make sure."

"But but but-" Wade waves a hand around at him. "But you've got the whole… spider. Thing. I'm pretty sure normal people don't manage to stick to walls!"

"Yeah, I think God left that one out of the manual," Peter says solemnly, and earns himself an exaggerated grimace. Wade just _overreacts_ at everything so intensely. It makes him way too much fun to tease. "I wasn't born this way."

Wade hums a few bars of Lady Gaga in response, chewing thoughtfully. "Yeah, just think how annoying that would've been for your parents. Leave you in the crib, come back and _bam!_ Baby spidey on the ceiling."

Against his will, Peter finds himself picturing that. He makes a face. "It's sort of like that scene in-"

" _Trainspotting,_ right," Wade says, nodding vigorously. "That's some fucked-up shit, Spides, and make no mistake. But wait a second." He points at him accusingly with the crumbling remains of his taco shell. "If you don't even have the recessive gene, then how the hell'd you get all…" He waves his hand around.

"Freakish?" Peter supplies, bitterly.

"I was gonna say _hot,_ " Wade corrects with a shrug, "but sure, if you want."

_Hot?_ Peter looks away and feels grateful, not for the first time, for the mask that covers his expression. Even with his mouth exposed, at least Wade won't be able to see how bad he's blushing. _He can't even see what I look like, why is he-_ "It's kind of a stupid story."

"All origin stories are stupid, kid, that's part of the bag. Except mine, obviously, mine was hardcore. But wait." Wade presses a hand over his eyes. "Don't tell me, it's coming back to me now. You'd think after all the reboots I'd remember. Were you… bombarded by a storm of cosmic rays? No, wait, that was the Fantastic Four. Shit."

Peter leans back on his hands, biting his lip to keep his grin in check. Wade doesn't need the encouragement. "Want me to give you a hint?"

"No, I know this one! Was it… exposed to gamma radiation? No, damn it, that was the Hulk, he's not even in this continuity anymore. Um. Picked up a magic ring from alien police? No, fuck, that's not even the right _publisher,_ and anyway that movie was terrible. At least poor Ryan Reynolds has a better franchise now. Those bills don't pay themselves. What about-"

Peter's kind of got the feeling that Wade can go on like this for a while if someone doesn't interrupt him. _Ah, hell, what can it hurt? It's not like he can trace it back to Oscorp._ "I was bitten by a radioactive spider."

Wade snaps and points at him. "Shit, yes, that's the one! That makes way more sense." He shoves the last bite of taco into his mouth, chews messily. "Goddamn, I take it back, that's way better than my bullshit origin story. Who gives a shit about a weirdo mutant torture factory when you can be _bitten by a radioactive spider?_ Now _that's_ the kind of movie you can take your kids to go see. No R rating for you, nosiree."

Peter wants to make a quip- he's even got something lined up about using the F-word, it's right there on the tip of his tongue. But then he thinks about the tower, and the joke dies unsaid in his mouth. 

No real surprise. He always thinks of the tower- even now, years later, when he should be over it by now. He would have thought that Uncle Ben would be the one that haunts his nightmares, and it _does,_ but not the same. On his bad days, on his good days, doesn't matter. It's always the fucking tower, and the _cold,_ and the ache of all his bruises and sprains, and the frantic _one-two-three_ count of the chest compressions, just like they taught him in first aid class, and the horrible snap of a rib under his hands-

It had all been pointless, anyway. He hadn't been fast enough to save his uncle, and he hadn't been fucking fast enough to save Gwen's dad. He's never been fast enough when it really mattered.

"You okay over there, Spidey?"

"Yeah, it's just-" He balls his hands together in his lap, tries to smile. "Not all it's cracked up to be. I guess."

Judging from the answering twist to Wade's mouth, Peter's attempt to smile wasn't very successful. "Yeah," Wade says, and looks down at his hands. "Guess it never is."

It's only a half-second later that Peter takes his head out of his ass long enough to realize that he was comparing his losses to Wade's _being tortured for weeks on end_ and immediately feels like the worst shitheel ever _._ _Jesus Christ, Parker, could you *be* more fucking self-centered?_

"Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

"Nah, it's all good, Spider-babe," Wade says. His smile comes more easily than Peter would have expected. He's starting to get the feeling that Wade prides himself on being able to bounce back quick, and not just because of his powers. "The weird and the gruesome ain't for everybody, and I wouldn't wish it on a cutie like you. Someone's got to get out with their looks intact, right?" He grins before Peter can point out that Wade doesn't even know what he looks like. "At least I've got my sense of humor!"

"You've definitely got that," Peter agrees. He hasn't laughed this much in- a while. He should probably feel bad about that. Wade's jokes tend towards being so off-color they're practically see-through, but he still had Peter in stitches over their first few tacos with a story about a chicken, a fire hose, and police officer that was so filthy it's probably illegal.

Wade smirks and starts licking the spatters of hot sauce off his gloved fingers. "I've got more where that came from, you know. I pretty much never run down, you can ask anyone." He brightens. "You can ask Vanessa! Shit, I keep forgetting you two know each other."

The mention of her name is like a bucket of cold water. "'Know' might be a little strong," Peter says diffidently. Inwardly he can't help but squirm. "But, uh, sure. If I see her again."

_And what are the chances of that?_

"You should! Which reminds me, Nessa says you used to come by pretty often, but I haven't seen you around the last week. I was about to go looking." Wade gives him a sideways look, the street lights below them painting the white of his masked eyes a sickly yellow and catching against the rueful twist of his scarred mouth. "Was it something I said?"

_There is only room for one insecure weirdo on the roof, and I've got seniority._ "I guess I figured I'd keep it simple," he says, which has the advantage of being true. Peter's gotten pretty comfortable with partial truths over the years, and _I wasn't the one who stopped_ would be all kinds of awkward to explain. "You know, you've got your neighborhood, et cetera, et cetera."

"Well that sounds boring."

Wade sounds so flatly dismissive that Peter has to bite back on a laugh. "General rule of thumb in this business: if it looks like someone's got dibs on an area, it's usually safer to just steer clear. You'd be surprised at how territorial people get."

"Less surprised than you might think, buttercup, but the advice is appreciated." Wade rolls his shoulders. "For what it's worth, you shouldn't stay away on my account."

He says it breezily enough, but Peter catches the underlying hint of uncertainty. It's not… a surprise, exactly, given that Wade's made it clear multiple times that his interest in Spiderman is more than a _momentary_ whim, at least, but it's still a little baffling. _Seriously, why does he even care?_ "I'll keep that in mind."

Wade nods vigorously. "I'm not interested in territory. And besides, even if I was, you'd be totally welcome. Safety guaranteed, and all that jazz. I'd never stab my Spider-bro when we're only in like, the first couple issues. Still in the origin story! I don't want to be the asshole who gives the reboot the axe before it gets a chance to grow into its narrative arc, y'know?"

"Yeah," Peter says, and hides his involuntary smile in an enormous bite of taco. Maybe it doesn't matter why Wade gives a shit. It's just nice that someone does. "Roger that."

Wade clears his throat. "Good, good, glad we got that out of the way. So you're gonna stop by sometime, right? The food's shit, but who's picky these days?" Peter hesitates, but Wade rambles on, brightening as something else occurs to him. "Oooh! Or we could do a team-up. Just think of the sales!"

Peter snorts and flicks a spare hot-sauce packet at the side of his head. Wade bats it away and grins back at him. It's a really infectious smile, scars and all, and Peter finds himself smiling back a little helplessly. He looks away, silently thankful for costume hiding the flush creeping up the back of his neck.

"I don't really need to give New York's finest another reason to hate me, you know."

"Nah, you're right. Save something for the later issues, definitely. Don't want to blow your wad on the first volume. Trades are so expensive these days."

_Nerd,_ Peter thinks affectionately. "Digital is the way to go," he agrees. "Plus, no obnoxious comic shop owners. It's win-win."

Wade clutches his hands together under his chin. "Aww, Spidey, you didn't tell me you were a nerd too!"

Peter laughs and crumples up his takeout bag into a tiny little ball, then pulls his mask back down over his face. "Save that for another issue too, I guess."

Wade leans back on his palms. "Leavin' so soon, Spiderbite?"

_That one's actually pretty good,_ Peter thinks with a snort. "It's almost three in the morning. If I'm lucky, I might get a couple hours of sleep before-" _Class,_ he almost finishes, and then bites it back before he can out himself. "-stuff," he finishes, lamely. "That I have to do. In the morning."

"Oh yeah, stuff to _do,_ " Wade says, waggling his eyebrows. Peter groans.

"Not like that!"

"I am not a man to judge, Spidey! Some men prefer the morning, you know, get a good night's rest first. I personally am all about the relaxation before bed, but-"

"Yeah, more than I needed to know, thanks." Peter rolls his eyes and stands up. "It's been fun." He tries his best to make it sound sarcastic, but unfortunately he's pretty sure it just comes out as sincere. _Damn it._

Wade lets his head loll back to look up at him. "It sure has, sweetness, it sure has. Do this again sometime?"

_Terrible idea,_ he thinks. _Don't do it. Don't get involved. Just gently make your excuses, say your goodbyes, and then get out of here and don't patrol in this neighborhood again. Simple._

"Guess we'll have to see," is what comes out of his mouth, and he groans and takes a step back into the open air over the street before he can say anything else stupid.

"Famous last words, Spidey!" he hears Wade call out behind him, and definitely doesn't look back as he swings away.

**~*~**

As late as it is when he gets home, it's still not late enough for his roommate to be passed out in bed, judging by the high-pitched moans coming from the apartment. Peter rolls his eyes as he lets himself in, dropping off his keys as he locks back up behind him and scooping up one of the rubber bouncy balls he keeps in the key dish for exactly this purpose. It takes barely a moment for his vision to adjust to the darkened apartment, and then he takes aim and lets fly.

There's a muffled _thwomp_ of rubber meeting skull at velocity, and then a yelp of pain. _He shoots, he scores!_

"What the _shit!"_

Peter rolls his eyes again and catches the ball as it bounces back to him, tossing it back into the key dish for next time. He considered a squirt bottle, but figured it'd be a little too on-the-nose. "We've been over this, Flash. You need to fuck in your own goddamn room, not the couch that _both of us have to sit on._ "

There's a brief, hilarious moment of silence, and then a low, feminine voice hisses, "I thought you said you lived alone!"

Peter sighs. _Every goddamn time._ "Surprise!"

There follows the scramble of way-too-naked limbs, blonde hair, and blankets. Peter snorts and turns politely around, listening to the hasty _pad-pad-pad_ of bare feet as Flash's partner bolts for the bedroom. "You know, if you want to lie to girls to get them into bed, that's your problem, but at least stop telling them you don't have a roommate. It just gets awkward."

Flash throws a pillow at the back of his head. Peter catches it and tosses it onto the nearby chair. "You couldn't have waited half an hour longer?"

"Yeah, no," Peter says. "It's almost three-thirty. This one's all on you."

"Aw, fuck." There's a _shush_ of cloth as Flash wiggles back into his boxers, then stands up. "Didn't realize it was so late."

"Yeah, no kidding." Sure now that he's safe from seeing things that can't be unseen, Peter turns around to grab his backpack and head back into his room. "Keep it down in there, some of us actually want to get some sleep before class tomorrow."

Flash winks. "No promises, man. No promises."

_Ugh._ "And you're cleaning the couch tomorrow!"

"Go fuck yourself!"

Locked safely away in his own room once more, Peter flops back onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling. A moment later, the distant sound of a moan drifts to his ears, and he curses his hearing as he gets up and grabs his headphones. He flicks on a random playlist and shoves them over his ears, and the resulting blare of guitar more or less drowns out the serenade coming from the other room, thank God.

_[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF5rnYCA61s) Welcome home outcasts because I know how you have felt over the years_  
_The truth is that looking at me is like lookin' in the mirror[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF5rnYCA61s)_

Then he flops back down.

_So,_ he thinks. _That happened._

He was not intending to befriend a wanted criminal when he left for patrol this evening. It was very firmly _not_ on his agenda, because guys like Wade are usually the kind of people that Peter is doing his best to put behind bars.

Not that he really knows many people like Wade.

Not that there really _are_ many people like Wade. Peter's getting the impression that he's a 'broke the mold' kinda guy.

Probably because he's _fucking crazy._

Peter groans and shoves his pillow over his head. Why can't he meet any normal people? College was supposed to be about getting out there and making new friends, wasn't it? Expanding your _fricking_ horizons, and all that jazz. It turns out being "that nerd with the camera" isn't really any less of a detractor than it was in high school, in spite of what all the guidance counselors tried to tell him. Maybe if he ever goes to any of the parties Flash is always bragging about- but that'll happen just about when hell freezes over, so. It's not like he has a lot of opportunities for socializing outside of the suit.

And it's not like Spiderman's the most popular guy on the block, either. The real superheroes like the X-Men or the Fantastic Four either don't know about him or don't care- probably the latter, considering how much ink he gets on the front page of the _Bugle._ And despite what the comic books led him to believe, rescuing random civilians isn't exactly the best way to meet 'n greet. Most of them don't see him as any better than the people he saves them from, and the ones that do tend to look at him like- like he's not really a person. Like Spiderman is something more than just a mask he wears so he can help people.

Which is flattering, but unsettling. Since Gwen left, Vanessa was the only person to look Spiderman in the eye and talk to him like he was a normal human being. Vanessa, with her long tiger-stripe hair and her clever dark eyes, with the Star Wars jokes and the easy smirk. Pretty Vanessa Carlyle, who hadn't needed him to save her, who wasn't scared of him and didn't think he was a freak, who wasn't ashamed about who she was or what she'd done because why should she be? Vanessa who treated him like a goddamn _person_ , and he hadn't realized how much he'd needed that until then. It probably didn't really count as a friendship, but it was nice. It was something to look forward to.

Until the night she told him about Wade. And promptly disappeared.

He went by a few times, but though some of the dancers on their smoke break would give him a wave, Vanessa never came out to say hi. He'd been kind of wondering if she'd left to go work somewhere else, and had been working himself up to asking one of the dancers about it when he ran into Wade last week. And since Wade had said that she still worked there- Well, it seems pretty obvious that she hadn't wanted to see him anymore. Which makes sense! Wade came back from the dead, she had her own personal superhero to look out for. Peter's not exactly going to blame her for her priorities. He's just feeling a little… abandoned. And annoyed with himself for feeling that way, when he's got no right.

_Which makes it doubly stupid that you're making friends with her boyfriend,_ Peter points out to himself. _Because your life wasn't complicated enough already._

God, what would Gwen say if she could see him now? That he's being an idiot, probably. It's her default response to just about anything he does, admittedly, but she's also usually right. He _is_ an idiot.

But Gwen isn't here, is she. She's off being excellent and talented and lovely across the Atlantic Ocean, far away from Peter and all of his bullshit that nearly ruined her life a dozen times over. And Harry's in jail. And his Aunt May doesn't even know he's Spiderman. And Flash… does not even belong on this list. He's on his own.

Just like always.

He sighs and rolls over, abruptly too tired to get up and get undressed. He wriggles out of jeans and hoodie, then crawls under the covers in his shirt and boxers. He doesn't have _time_ to worry about this now. He's got to get through finals week first, and then, if he hasn't dropped dead from exhaustion, he can figure out what he wants to do about Wade.

Even over the sound of the music, he can still hear a shout and a thump from the other bedroom. He curses himself, not for the first time, for giving in to Flash and not just Craigslisting a roommate like he'd intended, and cranks the volume up even higher on his phone. His alarm is set for seven thirty; if he goes to sleep now he might actually get about three and a half hours before he has to drag himself off to class.

The real problem isn't his roommate, though, as much as he's comfortable with a long-standing habit of blaming Flash for everything. The real problem is the treacherous little voice in the back of his head, the one that no amount of music can drown out. It's the same voice he always hears when he's about to do something reckless, like jump off a thirty-story building, or set a trap for a giant lizard, or get into a punching match with a man wearing a motorized semi truck shaped like a rhino. There's always that little whisper in the back of his head, and it always says exactly the same thing:

_At least you're not bored._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song credits:
> 
> -Wade sings "Wind Beneath My Wings," because of course he does.
> 
> -Peter's listening to "Welcome to the New South" by Less than Jake, off their album _Anthem_ , which is my current go-to for singing along very loudly while driving with the windows down. I guess it'd be good at drowning out noisy roommates, too.


	3. ISSUE THREE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Wade continues to reign as the Stalker Supreme, Vanessa continues to be amused, and Peter continues to hate Thursdays.

The first time, that was the meet-cute. The second time, definitely narrative convenience: gotta give the main characters an excuse to interact, keep the plot moving forward. Wade was sort of hoping that Spidey would come back on his own for numero tres, seeing as how Wade was so nice and gave him an invitation and everything, but when another week passes and neither hide nor hair of Spidey can be seen, Wade figures that the third time is probably on him.

At least he's got a lot of experience finding people.

Still, it's not like it's going to be a walk in the park. His tried and true method of "shoot and/or stab a bunch of motherfuckers until someone coughs up something useful" is likely to be frowned upon in this case. Which is unfortunate, because that's served him well through three tours of duty, six continents, and one hell of a private vendetta, but ah well, needs must. It's going to have to be the long way, then.

To the Deadpool-Cave!

If Blind Al is surprised to see him (heh, "see") she doesn't say anything, just rolls her eyes and goes back to her game of Solitaire. Wade stops in the middle of the living room, waiting for a comment that doesn't come. "That's it? That's all I get? Over a month, and I don't even get a 'well well, look what the cat dragged in?'"

She snorts at him. "Figured you went off and got yourself killed."

"That's impossible. We've covered this." He puts his hands on his hips. "Did you shed a tear for me?"

"No."

He pouts a little at her lack of hesitation. _Hard-hearted._ "Not even a little one?"

"Not even for the lost rent."

"Yeah, about that-"

"Nice try. You paid in advance for the year, remember?"

_Fuck._ "Yeah, well, did you notice that those cards aren't actually in Braille?"

In his room, he drops the duffel bag down on the floor and kicks the door shut behind him. Huh, he's still got the Wall 'o Francis going on. He sorta thought that maybe he'd come back to take it down- but no, he'd pretty much gotten distracted and forgotten to come back.

"God, I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have my penis touched by another human being," he confesses to the photo of Francis. "Spoiler alert: it's everything I ever wanted."

Well. Almost everything. Turns out it's hard (heh) to really feel the magic when you can't talk yourself into taking your pants off. (The magic is, of course, vagina.)

...Not, like, to shower, obviously. He's not showering with his clothes on, that'd be weird.

Just taking _off_ his clothes, and not putting them back on, when other people are around. Just to clarify.

What was he talking about again?

"Sex is great," he tells the murderboard. "It'd be a lot better if I was having a lot more of it."

Oh right, Spiderman!

"I'm so glad that I shot you in the face and you never get to have anyone touch your penis ever again," he tells Francis, and rips the photo in half. "Okay, research montage, go!"

_[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsntlJZ9h1U#t=0m40s)Private eyes_  
_They're watching you_  
_They see your every move...[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsntlJZ9h1U#t=0m40s)_

At least he's got a thematically appropriate soundtrack.

Research montage is not exactly his favorite way to spend an afternoon, but the first thing he pins up is a photo of Spiderman mid-flip, ass pointed straight towards the camera, and whenever he feels his attention span flagging, he's at least got that to motivate him. It's all about keeping your eyes on the prize.

"My, and what a prize it is."

One advantage to going after someone in costume is that they tend to draw attention to themselves. Spiderman's famously camera-shy, but it doesn't take more than ten minutes on some of the cape fansites to start pulling up blurry cell phone pic after blurry cell phone pic. Totally useless, of course, unless you're the kind of person who likes to debate whether or not he's wearing Costume Number Three: The One That Still Has the Burn Mark from The Factory Fire Last Year, which Wade is obviously _not._ Well, okay, he might have gotten into an argument or two about the new costumes the Fantastic Four swapped to last year, but honestly, who _didn't_ have an opinion about that?

What's really useful, as far as Wade's concerned, is the fact that blurry cell phone photos mean that they were taken on delightfully lacking-in-privacy cell phones, and cell phones mean GPS data. "God bless the Internet," Wade murmurs, saluting the picture of Al Gore taped over the lampshade on the night table, "you were really lookin' out for the creeps and weirdos that day." Pictures collected (and videos, for later inspiration), he nukes the website behind him with a DoD-commissioned hack and leaves a friendly thank-you note behind him. He appreciates the efficiency of crowdsourced surveillance, but he can't risk anyone else getting the same bright idea.

With the location data he manages to get a decent map going- enough that he's got a pretty good idea of Spidey's usual patrol routes. He covers a not-insignificant amount of ground, considering that the dude uses actualfax webbing as a method of transportation. Lots of bad neighborhoods on there, surprise surprise. And a lot of very nice ones, but those are mostly the fly-bys: high rises and stuff, the kind of thing that's convenient to get around on when you're doing a Tarzan impression. Anytime someone's gotten a photo of him anywhere close to the ground, it's usually been in the kind of place Wade used to drink. "Targeted urban enforcement" is the polite term for it, but Wade's got a feeling that nobody quite had costumed weirdos with superpowers in mind when they thought that one up.

One outlier: a handful of nicer downtown neighborhoods, with some better-than-usual photo ops. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the common denominator there: the giant college campus right in the middle of them, teeming with eager young minds and eagerer young bodies. Wade looks over at the picture of Spiderman. "He could be about the right age." Spiderman's ass stares back at him. "Shut up, I know I'm a creep."

There's another possibility, though. Wade goes back out into the main room and grabs the back-issues of the _Bugle_ that Al keeps as a doorstop. Now he's never been the most avid consumer of print media, but if he's remembering correctly...

Sure enough. The _Bugle_ always has the front-page scoop: big, splashy photos of Spiderman, frequently mid-leap or mid-swing. The one on the murder board-

" _Not_ a murder board anymore," he mutters. "It's a… stalker board? Obsession board?" Yeah, that's not really making it better. "Oh! _Love_ board. Yeah, that sounds way better."

-was from one of their articles. He remembers seeing them on the fansites, too, usually with much lamenting over what _this_ guy sold his soul to in order to get photo ops like that. There'd been no geocache data on them, since they'd all been taken off the _Bugle_ website, so Wade hadn't really paid as much attention to them, but-

Huh. Wade starts pulling out all of the _Bugle_ photos and pinning them up alongside his motivational moment. Admittedly he doesn't know the campus very well, seeing as by the time he got back stateside he was the sort of person to be "gently" escorted away from coeds at the end of a security baton, but…. He's pretty sure he recognizes at least some of the architecture.

He checks the photo credits on the _Bugle,_ wondering if it's an in-house photographer, but no. "P. P." isn't what you'd call an easily-identifiable name, so he's leaning towards freelancer, but a quick check of the _Bugle's_ staff profiles page confirms that there's no one on staff that has those initials. Some heavy-duty sifting through the back issues turns up the fact that P. P. ( _heh_ ) has only ever sold Spiderman photos, at least under that pseudonym. Nothing else.

"I think you've got a fan," Wade confides to the mu- love board. "Aside from me, obviously. I'd say I'm still your number one, but considering the angles he's got on you-"

He stops and looks at the photos again. They _are_ really good angles, but they also never quite capture his face. Just a glint of the white eyepieces, or the angle of his jaw. Most of the photos focus on the spider-symbol on his back or chest, or the acrobatic lines of his body doing a flip: artistic, well lit, and most of all, _anonymous._

"Or maybe it's more like you've got a friend," Wade murmurs. There's no way that Spiderman didn't know those photos were being taken. Wade's had enough people under a scope to know how people hold themselves when they know they're being watched, and some of those photos look almost… posed. Dare he say it, even _staged._

"Huh," he says. "Something to keep in mind for later, maybe.”

He could always try tracking down the freelancer- he’s got a couple angles he could work, and he’s pretty sure he could get the guy’s name with a relatively minimal amount of effort. But even _if_ the photographer is a good enough buddy of Spiderman to point Wade in the right direction, it doesn’t exactly put Wade’s name up in lights as a friendly, trustworthy kinda guy. He’s trying to _find_ Spidey, not scare him off forever.

On the other hand, he might be making it too complicated. Wade thinks about the speech Spiderman gave him the other night, about masks and having dibs on an area. _You’d be surprised at how territorial  
people can get._ Wade looks back at the board, at the cluster of pins near the college campus. _Territory._

He knows where Spidey’s going to be. If not tonight, then tomorrow, or the next day. That gives him some options.

“Maybe my last invitation was too subtle,” he says, and takes out his phone. “I’ll have to try something a little more… obvious.”

~*~

Wade's whistling when he gets home that afternoon, which Vanessa finds suspicious on a deep and personal level. First of all, because "Private Eyes," is the stalker's anthem, and Wade's internal soundtracks usually have a theme. And second of all, because she gets reflexively suspicious _anytime_ he's this cheerful, and that's an instinct that's held true since long before he crashed back into her life in a skintight red suit like an especially violent Santa Claus.

He cuts off abruptly when he comes around the corner and sees her lying in bed, wincing as he realizes that she was asleep. "Sorry, babycakes," he says. "Thought you had the day shift."

"Swapped with Rosie so I could take a look at that place you told me about," she says, trying to stifle a yawn, "and also I'm going with 'no' on babycakes."

"Yeah, I admit it didn't exactly roll off the tongue. We'll work on it." He sits down on the arm of the couch and starts unlacing his boots. "So what'd you think of the apartment?"

"I think 'apartment' is a fancy word for 'abandoned warehouse that some hopeful real estate guy got zoned residential,'" she says. "I also think the gentrification movement is getting a little out of hand."

"Plus, it's so racist and classist," he says. "Terrible people, those real estate folk. Also not very bright. Did you see how little he was asking for the place?"

"Yeah, very sensibly, because it's a shithole," she says. "I don't blame them for getting desperate. Only a complete idiot would pay a dime for that place." Silence, even more suspicious than the whistling. She leans up on one elbow to look at him as he pulls his boots off with a thump. "You already bought it, didn't you."

"I do have impulse control problems," he agrees, and comes over to brush a kiss over her forehead. "We can fight about it later. You get back to sleep, I'll keep quiet."

"Yeah, no." She grabs his wrist when he makes as if to go back to the couch, and tugs insistently when he looks at her in confusion. "I'm awake now."

"Does that mean we're fighting about it now?"

"No, it means you need to get the fuck down here and cuddle."

"You're so demanding," he complains, but he's quick enough to shuck off his sweatshirt and crawl into bed next to her. She flails the covers haphazardly over him and then rolls him over onto his side so that she can octopus-grab him from behind. "You comfortable?" he says sarcastically. "Need to move me around anymore?"

"Nope, this is good." She rubs her cheek against his back through his t-shirt and hugs him tighter around the ribs. Mmmm, warm Wade. He put off heat before, but he's like a fucking radiator now. "Cold hands incoming."

"Whoa hey now-" he says, but it's too late: she's already wormed one hand under his shoulder and the other up his shirt to rest on his stomach. "Holy shit, icicle woman! Who told you this was okay?"

She wriggles the thumb with the Voltron ring against his belly, and he squirms from a combination of ticklishness and cold metal against his skin. "Your fault."

"You can't blame everything on me."

"Fuckin' watch me."

"That's so rude," he complains. "I'm a human being, you know. I have feelings. Dreams. Aspirations-"

She yawns against his back. "So how's the stalking going?"

A pause. "I have absolutely no idea to what you could be referring."

"Sure you don't, Edward. Peer into any bedroom windows lately?"

"That is vile and slanderous, and I resent the implication-"

"Uh-huh."

"-and obviously _not,_ I have no idea where his bedroom even is." He fiddles with the end of her sleeve. "I found his nest though- do spiders even _have_ nests?"

"Mostly just webs, I think." She thinks back to the documentary she was watching a few weeks ago. "Maybe one or two that burrow?"

"'Spider burrow' just sounds weird. Roost? Perch? Den?"

"Hideout?"

" _Lair,_ " Wade declares. "I like that one, I'm sticking with it. So I found his Spider-lairs, or at least some of them, I guess. I mean if I were him I'd have them all over the city, that's just sound strategic thinking-"

She interrupts him with a nip to the back of his neck. Pressed as close as they are, he can't hope to hide the convulsive shudder that runs through his frame in answer, but the way he shuts his mouth with a snap would've given him away regardless. She grins and presses a kiss to the spot to soothe it, sliding her hand stealthily up his chest. "So what sort of message did you leave?"

"Why would you think I left a- ah! message?"

She slides her hand back down from his nipple, lets her palm sweep low and steady down his chest, over his belly. "Because I've met you ever?"

"I resemble that remark," he admits, his voice going a little lower, a little rougher. She _mmmm_ s into the crook of his neck. "Okay, so I left a message."

She can feel the tension coiling tighter in his frame the further south her hand goes. Mostly good tension, but when her questing fingers come down to cup the erection filling out the front of his jeans, she can feel him flinch ever-so-slightly back even as he presses his hips forward into her hand. Not sure yet if he wants her to stop. "What kind of message?"

He clears his throat. "It was very tasteful."

She snerks. "I'm sure it was, baby." She flicks open the top button of his jeans with her thumb, and Wade's hand comes up to grab her wrist. From the way he freezes, she guesses it wasn't entirely intentional, and she deliberately relaxes, lets her hand go slack against him. _No threat._ "This okay?"

"Um." He rubs his thumb against the jut of her wrist, apologetically. "Just this?"

"Sure." Her easy agreement gets him to ease up his grip, but he doesn't let go entirely. She lets his hand ride over hers as she pulls the zip down on his jeans, reaches in and strokes him through his boxers. "You know, he walked me home once."

"Ummm?" he says, because even new Wade needs a few seconds for his brain to reboot after she gets her hand on his cock.

"Spiderman. He walked me home, that first time we met. Well, shadowed me from the rooftops, but close enough, right?"

"He does seem like the chivalrous type," Wade agrees. She carefully tugs at the slit in his boxers. "Very thoughtf- _ohjesus_."

She grins and tightens her hand around him. "What I'm saying here, is that he knows where I live." She leans up on one elbow, just enough to get her mouth right next to his ear. They're not as sensitive as they used to be, but her breath on the outside still makes him shiver. "Which means he knows where you live. What if he got your note already? He'd know where to find you."

"Ohhhh," Wade breathes, and his hand tightens convulsively over hers. This time, though, it doesn't seem like he's trying to stop her. Kind of the opposite. "He could be _here._ "

"Right outside," she agrees, and tries a little nip to his earlobe. The noise he makes is entirely satisfactory, so she does it again, just to be thorough. Mmm, even better the second time around. "Watching you."

It's a calculated move. Wade used to have an exhibition streak a mile goddamn wide, but there was no way to tell how it would translate over with how gun-shy he is about his new looks. She suspects that he wouldn't still be down for some of the riskier public sex they used to have, when anyone could come along and catch them- but his new obsession, on the other hand, seems ripe for exploitation.

"Oh-" he pants, and she can feel his cock pulse in her hands. Not quite coming, but not far off, either.

"He could be looking through that window right there- seeing our hands move under the blankets- watching your face as you get close-"

"Baby-" he says, and she tightens her grip, speeds up her strokes.

"Maybe he's even watching and touching himself too, through the costume-"

"Oh, shit," Wade says, very calmly, and then he spasms back against her and he's coming, his cock pulsing wet heat over her fingers. She milks him through it, sucking kisses against the crease of his neck, and when he's done she shamelessly wipes off her hand on his t-shirt and rolls politely out of his way.

He flops over onto his back, reaches down and zips his jeans back up, then zones out, staring up at the ceiling. "Holy fuck," he says blankly, after a moment of silence. "So that just happened."

“Mmm,” she says, and rolls back against his side. He obligingly lifts his arm and allows her to burrow back in. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m _very_ welcome,” he responds, seemingly on autopilot, then clears his throat. “Uh. What brought that on?”

She leans up just enough to give him an incredulous look. “Really?”

He has the good grace to look abashed. “Yeah, fine, okay.” Silence for a moment. “You want to have that fight now?”

_Oh, for the love of-_ She twists her head and sinks her teeth into his bicep. He yelps and she grins up at the ceiling.

“God, you’re like a cannibal, what is wrong with you.” He examines his arm, but of course there’s no mark. “So was that you telling me you want to put off the argument till later or…”

“Or,” she says. “You already bought the damn thing, what’s the point of fighting over it now?”

She feels him lift his head to peer down at her face, but doesn’t bother to look up. After a minute, his head thumps back against the pillows. “Okay, who are you, and what have you done with Vanessa?”

Because she’s not picking the fight with him, she knows. It’s something they used to do all the time, pick something to bicker over because it was fun, and they were competitive, and it’s not like any of it _mattered._ But then he got sick, and she fought with him over something that mattered to her very much and she _won_ and she was _right_ and he just, he just fucking left. And he lived, ultimately, which is great, it’s _amazing_ and a miracle and all that jazz, but it doesn’t erase the stuff from before, either.

She’s lost her taste for fighting with him.

But it’s not like she can explain that to him, either, not without hurting him needlessly. So she just rolls her eyes and says, “I’m not touching that place until you can prove there’s working electricity and running water.”

“Yeah, nevermind, there’s my girl.” Wade smooths a hand down over her hair. She’s going to have to cut it again soon, it’s starting to creep down to almost her hips and she’s getting tired of it getting tangled on everything. “I think that we can work something out.”

She holds up a hand, littlest finger extended. “I’m holding you to that, you know.”

He hooks his pinky around hers and gives it a solemn shake. “You know if you cut that off it’s just going to grow back again, right?”

“Gross, Wade.”

“Just making sure you’ve got full disclosure.”

“You’re supposed to do that _before_ you make the agreement.”

“Look, I think we’ve established that I’m not above tricking you into poor relationship decisions-”

“With what, the power of your penis?” She snorts. “Shut up and go to sleep.”

He nudges his fingers against the waistband of her shorts. “You want me to return the favor?”

“Nope, all for you.” She closes her eyes pointedly. “ _Naptime._ ”

“Well, if my lady insists.” But a minute later, she feels him brush a kiss across her forehead and then he rolls out from underneath of her, tucking a pillow in under her arm to keep her from falling into the void he left behind in the mattress. She hazily tracks the pad of his bare feet around the curtain and then a minute later the shower starts up. Wade doesn’t sleep much anymore. Another on the list of changes that she keeps, somewhere in the back of her head where Wade will never, ever see it.

He’ll come back to bed in a little while, though. She may still be learning his sore spots, but he’s always been so much more gentle with hers than he ever would be for himself. She knows that when he gets back he’ll grab his phone or a book and slide under the covers, because he’s not going to leave her to wake up along. Not again.

Her last thought, before sliding down into sleep, is that maybe she should check the costume shop to see if they've still got any Spiderman knockoffs in her size.

**~*~**

Two days after his last final, Peter finishes up his patrol early with the vague idea of trying to catch up on a little of his perpetual sleep debt, and goes to grab a snack at one of his favorite hideouts, the spire on top of the the Xavier wing of the sciences library. There's a little platform partway up the spire that the astronomy students used to use to set up telescopes, but then the steps rusted out and there wasn't any money left for repairs, so the whole thing was cordoned off and declared off-limits to students. The platform itself is still basically intact, though, so Peter likes to webb himself up there and enjoy the view with a couple of power bars. It might not be much compared to, say, the top of the Baxter building, but it's still satisfying in a way he can't entirely explain to look out over campus and think, _I'm here, I made it. I survived this far and I can survive this too._

Or maybe he just gets embarrassingly philosophical when his blood sugar gets low. Who knows.

_Definitely time for food,_ he tells himself, and goes over to the little paper bag he has stashed under one of the benches. A protein bar might not be the most appetizing meal in the world, but super-metabolism waits for no man.

The bag's heavier than he expects it to be when he picks it up, however, and something with a corner jabs him in the hand. He freezes, taking a deep, slow breath, but his spidey-sense isn't going off, just the regular, garden-variety nervousness that any sane person feels when something familiar has suddenly sprouted an unexpected addition. _It's probably not a bomb. Or poison. Or a razor blade. Or-_

Gingerly, he peels open the bag and fishes out the intruder. It's… a card. Like something you'd find at a Hallmark store, with a cheerful red envelope and "Spidey" scrawled out on the front in messy-but-legible handwriting.

There's… a limited number of people who could have left this.

Really just the one likely candidate, if he's being honest.

He really hopes it's not a bomb.

He pulls off one of his gloves and slips open the envelope with his thumbnail, pulling the card inside carefully free. Nothing explodes, and Peter squints down at the cover, letting his eyes adjust to the dim lighting. It's black and white, with a happy little cartoon figure that looks enough like the Hamburglar to flirt with trademark violation that's clinging to cartoon jail-cell bars and grinning up at Peter.

_Be my partner in crime?_ it asks, and above "crime" some enterprising figure has written 'fighting' in red sharpie.

"Oh my god," Peter says blankly, and opens the card.

_[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc5u9NOV4sE#t=0m42s)Jenny I got your number_  
_I need to make you mine_  
_Jenny don't change your number-[♪♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc5u9NOV4sE#t=0m42s)_

Peter slams the card shut again before it can go into the rest of the janglingly loud chorus, but not fast enough that he didn't see the little handwritten note on the inside:

_For good time, call 768-555-9035._  
_ <3, DP._

"Oh my god," he says again, but he's halfway to laughing, completely against his will. "Oh my _god._ "

Deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, Peter shoves the card back into its envelope and drops it back into the bag. _I think it's officially time to figure out 'Plan B.'_

Back in civvies and safely back in his room with the door locked behind him, Peter pulls out the card again and studies it while he chomps down on one of his neglected protein bars. The not-Hamburglar grins back at him, unashamed, and now that he's got some direct light Peter notices that the i's in 'fighting' have little hearts over them.

_Of course they do,_ he thinks, fighting back hysteria. _What else would they be have?_

Fuck, what is he even supposed to _do_ in this situation? It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it before: hell, there’s been some times when he’s thought about nothing _else._ And he can’t handle this like he did when Smerdyakov was closing in; none of his fallback plans are designed to deal with someone who isn’t an enemy but isn’t necessarily an ally just yet, either. He’s not going to hurt Wade, and he’s not going to get him arrested, and that doesn’t really leave him with a lot of options.

Involuntarily, his gaze falls to the duffel poking out of his closet. He always keeps it at least halfway packed, just in case. And a cash reserve. Enough to get him out of New York and give him a couple of weeks to set up, if he never needs it. He hopes he doesn’t, but- hope for the best, plan for the worst, as Aunt May always said. Several years as a vigilante have hammered the importance of that lesson home.

The reminder that he has a fallback plan, however amorphous, allows him to take a deep breath and work his way through the problem a little more logically. Wade left him a message- addressed to Spiderman, and in one of Spiderman’s hideouts. Not his apartment. The fact that Wade was able to figure out one of his hideouts is worrisome, and more worrisome still that he went to the one _on campus,_ but even that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Peter thinks back- he’s pretty sure he didn’t say anything about class, but that doesn’t mean anything. As much as he likes to think otherwise, his age probably isn’t too difficult to guess, even through the full-face mask. And he patrols in the area, a lot more than he probably should. Targeting the hideout is a little more complicated, but Wade is, whatever his other eccentricities, clearly brutally intelligent, and he’s got a lot of practice tracing people down. It’s not too much of a stretch to think he could figure out that spot.

_Okay,_ Peter thinks, and lets out a long, slow breath. _So I’m not busted._ He looks down at the card in his hand. _But I might be, eventually, if I do this._ If Wade could track him down this far on two interactions, one that mostly consisted of them arguing on a rooftop, then it’s only a matter of time before Peter slips enough that Wade can figure out the rest. And there’s always Vanessa to worry about- Peter hadn’t talked to her much, in the scheme of things, but he’s told her things he probably wouldn’t have said to Wade. In time, between the two of them, they could figure it out. If they wanted to. Could he live with that possibility?

He rubs his thumb over the phone number and shakes his head. _Only one way to find out._

He keeps a burner phone in his duffel for situations pretty much like this, and he types in the number and hits _send_ before he has a chance to think better of it. It barely has a chance to ring twice before the line connects. Peter's panicked flailing over what he's going to say is overcut by Wade's cheerful, "Deadpool's House of Horrors, I'll stab 'em if you slab 'em, how may we help you today?"

Peter takes a deep breath. "Got your note," he says, as calmly as possible.

There's a half-beat pause from the other end, in which Peter has time to imagine all sorts of terrible scenarios, like what if Wade doesn't recognize his voice, or what if Wade changed his mind, or _what if Wade knows where he lives-_

"Spidey!" Wade trills. "You like the card?"

"I would have liked it better if you'd given it to me in person," Peter says. Then he realizes how that sounded and literally facepalms in mortification.

Wade, of course, doesn't miss a beat. "Well that can definitely be arranged, gorgeous," he purrs. "You name the time and place."

"No, I meant-" _Give it up, Peter._ "How did you even find that spot?"

"You've got a fan club, Spidey. The kind that pay out for the nice telephoto lenses."

So pretty much what he thought. Gwen’s been telling him that he needs to spread out his patrol a bit more. He’s not really looking forward to admitting to her how he figured out she was right. "You mean, besides you?"

"Nah, I'm really more of a polaroid kinda guy," Wade says. "Though if you want to model sometime..."

Wade trails off leadingly, and Peter clears his throat against a laugh. “I think I’ll have to pass,” he says, and snorts at the disappointed noise Wade makes in response. “Seriously though, how’d you find that spot?”

“Twigged to a couple of your patrol routes from photos, then got up to the highest places and hoped for the best,” Wade says easily. “I figured it was kind of a long shot, but Vanessa told me that hiring a sky writer would be excessive, so…”

Peter closes his eyes, trying not to imagine the headline of the _Bugle_ if Wade had gone with Plan A. “Smart woman,” Peter sighs, then opens his eyes again and squints at the wall across from him as he plays Wade’s answer back in his head. “Wait a second. Are you telling me that you left cards in all of my hideouts that you could find?"

"Hideouts! Damn, and I totally had my money on _lair._ "

"Wade."

"...The correct answer is 'no,' isn't it?"

Peter rolls his eyes, trying and failing to get annoyed about it. Oh, well, at least it was better than the alternative. _Though- God, I hope the fansites aren't going to start mistaking him for me. That's the last thing I need._ "How many?"

"Four, not counting the one you have." Wade clears his throat and then asks, in what he probably thinks is a casual voice, "Which one was it, by the way?"

"Nice try." There's a loud _scree_ from the other end, and Peter frowns down at the phone. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Pest- ugh, motherfucker! Pest control," Wade says, and there's a distinct crunch of a booted foot encountering bone in an unfriendly fashion. "Apparently _someone_ got my number out to a couple of the usual brokers, as an apology because _someone_ got me blacklisted from my old job because _someone_ is a dick-"

Peter clears his throat pointedly.

"-and now I'm down in the sewers getting blood all over my freshly laundered suit," Wade finishes. "Nothing sentient, hero, don't make that face at me. I'm coloring inside the lines like a good boy these days."

"Good to know," Peter says. And then: "Wait a second. When you say 'sentient,' do you mean like 'not a person,' or just 'not smart enough to walk and chew gum at the same time?'"

"...I meant the first kind, but I'm definitely going to remember that loophole for later," Wade says. "Thanks, Spidey! You're all kinds of helpful today."

"Glad to serve," Peter says dryly. There's a skittering noise on the line. Peter's a born and raised New Yorker, he knows that sound like the back of his hand. "When you say 'pests,' did you mean literally-"

"They're rat-lizards, okay," Wade interrupts. "Are you happy now? Some nutbar scientist dumped them somewhere and now there's a whole pack of the little bastards living in the drains."

Peter bites his lip.

"I can hear you laughing."

"I'm not laughing," Peter protests. _Okay, so I'm laughing._ "...Much."

"Shut up," Wade says. "I don't need your mockery. I get enough of that at home, thank you."

"I'm sure the rats are very scary."

"Rat- _lizards,_ and the fuckin' things are about three feet long and have crocodile teeth, so _yes,_ I've had better days."

Peter wants to make fun, but he's had those days. Sometimes it feels like he has nothing _but_ those days. "Did you leave me your number for a particular reason, or were you just bored?"

"It can't be both?"

He sighs and rolls over onto his back, staring at the ceiling. "You know, I haven't gotten proper sleep in like four days, so-"

"Jeezus cheezus, hold your fuckin' horses. Why is it every time we meet you're running off to get some sleep? Are you trying to tell me that I'm boring you?"

_Anything but that._ "I need my beauty sleep," Peter says, dry as dust. "Superheroing really takes it out of you. You should try it sometime."

"Shots fucking fired, Spiderbite! Mee-ow."

Peter licks his finger and traces an imaginary point in midair. Against a verbal sparring partner of Wade's caliber, he'll take every victory he can get. "You know, if you're not going to get to the point, I could always hang up-"

"Oh em gee, fine," Wade sighs. There's a wet noise that sounds suspiciously like something small and furry getting stabbed with extreme prejudice. "I was calling to see if you wanted to spar sometime.”

Peter blinks up at the ceiling, taking a minute to make sure that he heard that correctly. “Um.”

There’s an awkward little pause, and then Wade clears his throat. “I mean, if you don’t want to, that’s cool-”

“No!” Peter says, and then winces at how vehement that came out. “I mean, why me?”

Wade snorts, apparently soothed by Peter’s awkward enthusiasm. “Why _not_ you? You’re fast, you’re strong, and you’ve got the whole wall-crawler thing going. I’ve never had to fight vertically before; it could be an interesting challenge.”

Peter never really thought about it that way. His fighting style is mostly a hodgepodge combination of amateur boxing lessons from Uncle Ben, being hit repeatedly in the face by angry people until he learned to dodge, and a year or two of martial arts classes when he started here freshman year. (Until that supplementary scholarship ran out, and he had to focus on paying his rent.) The rest was always just- his powers, you know, stuff he did. It didn’t really occur to him until just now that he’s probably the one person who knows how to fight like that.

“Um, yeah,” he says, and curses himself for how hesitant it sounded. _Ah, well, he was always going to figure out sooner or later that you don’t actually have your shit together._ “Yeah, that sounds good,” he says, and it comes out a little firmer this time, a little more decisive. He looks down at the card lying next to his bed and makes a decision. “I’m finished with class for the summer, so my schedule’s pretty wide open for a bit.”

There’s a barely-there pause on the other end of the line before Wade says, “I think I’m going to be spending most of tomorrow at the laundromat getting sewer out of my uniform, but how how about Saturday?”

“Sounds good,” Peter says, smiling a little. “Just text the address to this number, I’ll check it sometime tomorrow. I can finish up my usual patrol and get downtown sometime after ten.”

“It’s a plan, Stan.” Wade clears his throat. “So the card you found… it was the one on campus, right?”

Peter shakes his head, fighting back a smile. _Should’ve known._ “Nice try, Wade. I’ll see you Saturday.”

“Aww, c’mon, you’re just going to leave me hanging like this? I’m all alone down here. You sure you don’t want to suit up and come keep me company?”

Peter has _more_ than done his time down in the sewers. “Use lemon juice,” he advises.

“Huh?”

“Lemon juice. It gets the smell out of spandex. And then twice through the laundry cycle.”

“You’re a peach, Spidey. Hey, while I’ve got you on the line, I don’t suppose you know how to track down a rat’s nest? Because-” There’s a crunch and then a defiant _scree_ on the other end of the line, followed by a bitten-out curse from Wade. “Ow, fuck! Get back here, you little-”

Peter smiles at the ceiling. “Good night, Wade,” he says, and hangs up before the other man can protest.

Well. That went… better than expected. Wade doesn’t know his name, or where he lives, a, and b, they’re going to meet the day after tomorrow and Peter’s going to get to spar against probably one of the best fighters he’s ever met. Because Wade wants to learn something from _him._

Of course, it’s possible that it’s just a ruse Wade is making up to lure Peter out to hang out with him, but even that is… affecting. No one’s ever really _wanted_ to be Peter’s friend before. It always happened by circumstance (Harry), or because he chased after their approval (Gwen), or out of sheer self-defense (Flash). He doesn’t really know why Wade’s chasing after him so hard, but it’s tremendously flattering nonetheless. Wade’s not like anyone he’s ever known, and he wants to be friends with _Peter._

It’s still probably a bad idea. It’s not like he doesn’t know that, but there’s a certain comfort even in that. In owning your probably-bad decisions, in having some knowledge of the consequences. Peter’s had too many things just _happen_ to him when he wasn’t paying attention. Just for once, he wants to go in with his eyes wide open.

He’s got a good feeling about this, though. Like maybe it won’t be a disaster after all. And hey, either way? At least he can say it _definitely_ will not be boring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wade's singing "Private Eyes" by Daryl Hall and John Oates, which is absolutely the creeper's anthem, for the record. And then of course his card is "Jenny" by Tommy Tutone. I'm pretty sure this card does not exist in any way, shape, or form, and if it does I'm pretty sure that's not the song that's in it, but let's face it. What are the chances that Wade _wouldn't_ hack the freaking card to play the appropriate song? C'mon. This is a man with a keen understanding of the importance of soundtrack.
> 
> Taking a bit of a break after this chapter... I'm working on two other projects, and trying to cycle around my time between them. Plus I have, like. Work. And stuff. *handwaves vaguely* Should be coming back to this in a few weeks, though, and will hopefully have people communicating like semi-functional adults when I'm back!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [sorrelchestnut](http://sorrelchestnut.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, come say hi!


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